Miles Wallingford / Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore"

by James Fenimore Cooper

We were an hour or more intently occupied in these explanations, before either recollected the future. Then I felt it was time to have some thought for our situation, which was sufficiently precarious, as it was; though Marble and Neb made light of any risks that remained to be run. I was saved, as it might be, by a miracle; and that was all that they could remember, just then. But a breeze sprang up from the eastward, as the sun appeared, and the agitation of the raft soon satisfied me that my berth would have been most precarious, had I not been so providentially relieved. It is true, Marble made light of the present state of things, which, compared to those into which he had been so suddenly launched,--without food, water, or provisions, of any sort,--was a species of paradise. Nevertheless, no time was to be wasted; and we had a long road to travel in the boat, ere we could deem ourselves in the least safe.

My two associates had got the launch in as good order as circumstances would allow. But it wanted ballast to carry sail hard, and they had felt this disadvantage; particularly Neb, when he first got the boat on a wind. I could understand, by his account of the difficulties and dangers he experienced,--though it came out incidentally, and without the smallest design to magnify his own merits,--that nothing but his undying interest in me, could have prevented him from running off before the wind, in order to save his own life. An opportunity now offered to remedy this evil, and we went to work to transfer all the effects I had placed on the stage, to the launch. They made a little cargo that gave her stability at once. As soon as this was done, we entered the boat, made sail, and hauled close on a wind, under reefed luggs; it beginning to blow smartly in puffs.

I did not part from the raft without melancholy regrets. The materials of which it was composed were all that now remained of the Dawn. Then the few hours of jeopardy and loneliness I had passed on it, were not to be forgotten. They still recur vividly to my thoughts with deep, and, I trust, profitable, reflections. The first hour after we cast off, we stood to the southward. The wind continuing to increase in violence, and the sea to get up, until it blew too fresh for the boat to make any headway, or even to hold her own against it, Marble thought he might do better on the other tack,--having some reason to suppose there was a current setting to the southward and eastward,--and we wore round. After standing to the northward for a sufficient length of time, we again fell in with the spars; a proof that we were doing nothing towards working our way to windward. I determined, at once, to make fast to them, and use them as a sort of floating anchor, so long as the foul wind lasted. We had some difficulty in effecting this object; but we finally succeeded in getting near enough, under the lee of the top, to make fast to one of its eye-bolts--using a bit of small hawser, that was in the boat, for that purpose. The boat was then dropped a sufficient distance to leeward of the spars, where it rode head to sea, like a duck. This was a fortunate expedient; as it came on to blow hard, and we had something very like a little gale of wind.

As soon as the launch was thus moored, we found its advantage. It shipped no more water, or very little, and we were not compelled to be on the look-out for squalls, which occurred every ten or fifteen minutes, with a violence that it would not do to trifle with. The weather thickened at these moments; and there were intervals of half an hour at a time, when we could not see a hundred yards from the boat, on account of the drizzling, misty rain that filled the atmosphere. There we sat, conversing sometimes of the past, sometimes of the future, a bubble in the midst of the raging waters of the Atlantic, filled with the confidence of seamen. With the stout boat we possessed, the food and water we had, I do not think either now felt any great concern for his fate; it being possible, in moderate weather, to run the launch far enough to reach an English port in about a week. Favoured by even a tolerably fair wind, the object might be effected in even two or three days.

"I take it for granted, Miles," Marble remarked, as we pursued our discourse, "that your insurance will completely cover your whole loss? You did not forget to include freight in the risks?"

"So far from this, Moses, I believe myself to be nearly or quite a ruined man. The loss of the ship is unquestionably owing to the act of the Speedy, united to our own, in setting those Englishmen adrift on the ocean. No insurers will meet a policy that has thus been voided."

"Ah! the blackguards!--This is worse than I had thought;--but you can always make a harbour at Clawbonny?"

I was on the point of explaining to Marble how I stood in relation to the paternal acres, when a sort of shadow was suddenly cast on the boat, and I fancied the rushing of the water seemed to be increased at the same instant. We all three sat with our faces to leeward, and all turned them to windward under a common impulse. A shout burst from Marble's throat, and a sight met my eyes, that caused the blood to rush in a torrent through my heart. Literally within a hundred feet of us, was a large ship, ploughing the ocean with a furrow that rose to her hawse-holes, and piling before her, in her track, a mound of foam, as she came down upon us, with top-mast and lower studding-sails set--overshadowing the sea, like some huge cloud. There was scarcely time for more than a glance, ere this ship was nearly upon us. As she rose on a swell, her black sides came up out of the ocean, glittering and dripping, and the tine of frowning guns seemed as if just lacquered. Neb was in the bow of the launch, while I was in the stern. My arm was extended involuntarily, or instinctively would be the better word, to avert the danger, when it seemed to me that the next send of the ship would crush us beneath the bright copper of her bottom. Without Neb's strength and presence of mind, we had been lost beyond a hope; for swimming up to the spars against the sea that was on, would have been next to hopeless; and even if there, without food, or water, our fate would have been sealed. But Neb seized the hawser by which we were riding, and hauled the launch ahead her length, or more, before the frigate's larboard bower-anchor settled down in a way that menaced crushing us. As it was, I actually laid a hand on the muzzle of the third gun, while the ship went foaming by. At the next instant she was past; and we were safe. Then all three of us shouted together. Until that moment, none in the frigate were aware of our vicinity. But the shout gave the alarm, and as the ship cleared us, her taffrail was covered with officers. Among them was one grey-headed man, whom I recognised by his dress for the captain. He made a gesture, turning an arm upward, and I knew an order was given immediately after, by the instantaneous manner in which the taffrail was cleared.

"By George!" exclaimed Marble, "I had a generalizing time of it, for half a dozen seconds, Miles."

"There was more risk," I answered, "than time to reflect on it. However, the ship is about to round-to, and we shall be picked up, at last. Let us thank God for this."