'Stonehaven,' said he; 'I am a Scotsman.'
'Stonehaven! I am from there myself. What is your name?'
'William Rudderford.'
'Had you ever a brother?' asked the boatswain, with sudden agitation.
'Yes,' replied the other; 'but it is many a year since he last saw me, in our mother's cottage beside the Cowie water. Poor Joe! I wonder if he is alive now!'
'I am Joe—your brother Joe, Willie!' exclaimed the boatswain; and now for several minutes their feelings so overpowered them that they could neither of them speak till relief was given by tears; and each had to tell the other a long story, which lies apart from mine.
We left Hong Kong for New Zealand, with a mixed cargo, and dropped down the Lamma Channel into the China Sea, and after leaving the port for which we were destined, gladly trimmed our course for London, thinking by this time we had seen a good deal of the world of waters; but after leaving the harbour of Otago, and working to windward of a headland named the Nuggets, we stood away for the Southern Pacific.
From that time the people in Dunedin, which we had left, and in London, for which we were bound, heard of us no more.
No homeward-bound craft reported having seen or spoken with the good ship Bon Accord, of Aberdeen; no message concerning her came from the antipodes; and, to torture the minds of our friends at home, the newspapers circulated all kinds of rumours—that bits of wreck had been seen, that we had among our cargo thirty tons of gunpowder, together with 'no end' of petroleum and turpentine, commodities certainly calculated to produce the direst effects if ignited.
Month after month rolled on, and not even the most slender tidings came of the beautiful ship, and apprehension of a terrible fate deepened into certainty, in the loving hearts of all who had friends on board.