"Wait a little while," Jim replied, shaking his head gravely as if the subject was too serious to admit of any discussion.
The boys were destined to be skeptical but a few seconds longer. Before another moment had passed a low groan was heard as if coming from beneath their feet, and all three instinctively ran across the deck to the starboard rail, to put the greatest possible distance between themselves and the unearthly sound.
This short flight was the one thing needed to reveal the seeming mystery; for as Jim leaped into the main rigging with the intention of going aloft, if the ghostly voice was heard again, he involuntarily glanced downward.
"Look! Look there!" he cried excitedly, pointing toward the water; and, following with their eyes the direction indicated by his trembling hand, the boys saw a Whitehall-built boat about twenty feet long made fast to the main-chains. An oar lashed to one of the thwarts served as a mast, and fastened to this was a small piece of canvas.
All these details were not at first remarked, for in the bottom, lying face downward as if dead, was a man. His outstretched hands looked like claws, so tightly was the skin drawn over the bones, and even though covered with clothing it could be seen that his body was wasted almost to a skeleton.
Unaccustomed though Harry and Walter were to such sights, it was not necessary for Jim to explain that the occupant of the boat was a shipwrecked sailor in the last stages of starvation. The night had been calm, and he probably propelled his craft with oars after the wind died away, making her fast to the main-chains as he uttered the cry which awakened Jim, and ceasing his appeal for help only when consciousness deserted him.
It was several moments that the boys stood gazing at these mute evidences of agony without making any effort to relieve the sufferer, and then Harry asked:
"Can't we do something to help him? Perhaps instead of being dead he has only fainted."
"I ought to be kicked for standin' here like a fool!" Jim exclaimed as he clambered over the side, and an instant later he was lifting the man to a sitting posture, crying, meanwhile: "Bring some water quick!"
Walter ran into the cabin, all fear of the place having been banished by the desire to aid the sufferer, and in a few seconds passed a pitcher of water into the boat.