We started up from the shelter where we were sleeping. We could scarcely believe our eyes, as with prayerful hearts we stretched out our hands simultaneously and in silence towards her.
Yes—yes! there she was, little more than a mile distant, a gallant brig of considerable burden, with her courses, topsails, and top-gallant-sails set, close hauled on the port tack, on a gentle breeze.
We were incapable of shouting or cheering, so great was our emotion, and many of us burst into tears when we saw the sheets let fly and the fore-yard thrown in the wind, while, as an additional token that we were seen and that succour was coming, the Stars and Stripes of America were run up to the gaff-peak, and a boat was instantly lowered and manned.
She proved to be the President, whaler, who, fishing in that lonely sea, had by chance come near the isle, where her morning watch had at dawn seen the fragment of our tattered blanket waving in the wind.
We were speedily taken off, after having spent—as a tally kept by Joe Rudderford showed—exactly one hundred and fifty-nine days (a little more than five months) on an isle of the Crozets; and, with one accord, we all stood bareheaded, and thanked God for all His goodness to us, when we found ourselves safe on the deck of the American.
Her captain made us all welcome and comfortable; but as we were what he called 'a tight fit' on board, with his own ample crew, he landed us at the Cape of Good Hope. There I parted company with Joe Rudderford and his brother, who shipped on board a Scotch clipper to return to their own home, while I, with the rest of the survivors, came back by a passenger steamer to London, and found that my people had long since given me up as dead.
A TALE