The captain never returned; and long after, I ascertained that the poor man had been knocked down by some unruly "navvies," that the cry I heard had been his, that he had been robbed and left senseless in the street of the village, while I lay asleep in the cabin of the empty schooner, with the flood-tide rising rapidly about her.
CHAPTER IV.
HOW I GOT ADRIFT.
I had been asleep nearly four hours, when a fall on the cabin floor, as I slipped from the table, awoke me.
Stiff, cold, and benumbed, I started up, confused to find myself in the dark, and at first I knew not where.
I reeled, and fell twice or thrice in efforts to keep my feet for now the schooner was rolling from side to side—rolling and afloat!
"Home—let me hasten home," was my first thought. I scrambled up the companion ladder and reached the deck, to find water around me on every side, while the schooner being without ballast and light as a cork, lay almost on her beam ends, as she was careened by a heavy breeze that blew from the shore, the lights of which, probably Erlesmere, I could see about three miles distant.
A deadly terror filled my heart!
To swim so far was impossible; I dared not leave the schooner, even with a spar or any thing else that would float, as the wind and sea were evidently rising together, and to remain on board was almost as dangerous and hopeless. I had the risk of drowning by her capsizing, or lying on her beam ends in the water, and so foundering and going down.
A plank might start in her sheathing—she might even then be filling by some uncaulked leak! I had no idea of the state of her hold, and from many reasons feared she might sink before daybreak, and before my perilous situation could be discovered from the shore.