This was joyous intelligence!
In short, I learned by degrees that Hartly and I were the sole survivors of the crew of the Leda. Paul Reeves and Jones the seaman had been found dead in the long boat by the crew of the barque, who buried them in blankets, each with a heavy shot at their heels. After this they scuttled the boat, as the sight of her suggested unpleasant ideas.
The vessel which picked us up proved to be the barque Princess, a stately Blackwaller of sixteen hundred tons register, Captain John Baylis, from Quebec, bound for the Cape of Good Hope, with a general cargo. Our poor boat, tossing on the sea, had been descried about daybreak, by a man who was at work on the maintopgallant yard. She immediately bore down upon us, and hence our rescue at a time so critical. I must have been insensible for about four hours when her crew found me; and but for their ministrations, could not have survived another.
Fortunately for Hartly and me, the jolly and hospitable captain had his wife on board, and she nursed us with the tenderness of a mother. Indeed, honest Baylis and his whole crew vied with her in their attention to us.
Our feet and legs were so soddened by the bitter, briny water in which they had been so long immersed, that for some days mortification was dreaded; but as Mrs. Baylis had six goats on board, she made, and skilfully applied, poultices of bread and milk, which ameliorated the symptoms and our sufferings.
Food and liquids were administered to us in homoeopathic doses at first; and several days elapsed before our interiors became accustomed to receive their usual quantities. At times we were both somewhat bewildered in mind—especially when the vessel encountered rough weather, and rolled much. Then Hartly and I were sure to imagine ourselves again in the longboat on the desolate sea, with the starving and dying around us; and long the voices of poor Hans Peterkin, of Paul Reeves, and the notes of Cuffy's violin, lingered in my ear, especially in dreams.
In about a fortnight—thanks chiefly to the kindness and nursing of Mrs. Baylis—we were able to sit on a sofa under an awning on the poop-deck; for we were now in warmer latitudes, and a protection from the sun of June was necessary. We greeted each other like two kinsmen who had escaped death; but Hartly mourned the loss of the Leda and of her crew, as they were all picked men, whom he never paid off on entering a port, but who had sailed with him to all parts of the world, and would as readily have thought of attempting to fly in the air as of leaving the poor old Leda.
For many days her loss, and the anecdotes connected with it, formed a staple subject for our conversation, until other thoughts, with returning health, forced themselves upon us; for those who are in the world must live for it.
The Princess was bound, I have said, for the Cape of Good Hope, where she would, perhaps, take a freight home for London; but there was an equal probability of her being chartered for Bombay, Hong Kong, or anywhere else, so that on reaching Cape Town there would be an immediate necessity for Hartly and me looking about us, and seeking means for returning to the great metropolis.
As we approached the line, the heat increased rapidly, awnings were spread over the decks, wind-sails were rigged down the hatchways, and skeets over the sides were resorted to daily.