'The wreck was swept off the reef, and all hands seemed to go down together. I began to choke, but suddenly felt the wind again in my face, and I thought someone near was singing out, but who it could be there was no telling in the utter blackness of that night.
'I fancied the typhoon was not quite so strong as it had been, and feeling a rope still fast round my waist I naturally thought I was secured to the mizen rigging. But instead of the shrouds my hand struck timber. That seemed to wake me up a bit, and I then discovered that your dad was alongside, and that both of us were lashed up to the mizen mast head, but how such a change of position was made I could not imagine. Of the remainder of the hands there was no trace. Anyhow, lad, you may think I'm yarning, yet it's true all the same, your father was asleep alongside of me, for all the world as though nothing particular had happened, or that both of us might be drowned at any moment.
'Good man! he was exhausted after saving someone for company, and lucky was it for me that he did so. As I afterwards found out, he cut both our lashings when the wreck fell off the reef, and finding that the mast remained upright, with a portion of the hull attached, so that it stood a few feet out of water, he grabbed me, and lashing himself to the support went to sleep.
'Next morning the typhoon had passed away, but the sea remained cross and high.
'Through it all that good old stick swam bravely, and after a while your father woke up, looking ten years older than he had done two days before.
'Some hours later a partly dismantled vessel, that had managed to steer clear of the 'heft' of the blow, picked us up, and we were finally set ashore at Hong Kong. That's the yarn, sonny.'
'Thanks, Readyman,' Jack replied. 'It was a fearful experience, but I never heard my father tell the story.'
'That was just his way, lad,' the quarter-master returned. 'If I had saved him, you'd never hear the end on't, but about himself there'd never be one word.'