“I thought they wouldn’t desert us! They have launched a boat, and it is pulling towards us now. Let us give them a hail; raise your voice, sir—one, two, three—now then. Boat ahoy!”
The mate did not help the chorus much, his voice being too weak as yet, and his lungs probably half full of salt water; but still, he joined in my shout, although those in the boat were too far off to hear it.
“We must hail them again,” I said, “or else they’ll pass to windward of us. Come, Mr Macdougall, one more shout!”
This time our feeble cry was heard; and a hearty cheer was borne back down on the breeze to us, in response, the men in the boat pulling for us as soon as they caught our hail.
In another five minutes, it seemed, but perhaps it was much less—the tension on one’s nerves sometimes making an interval of suspense appear much longer than it really is—the Esmeralda’s jolly-boat was alongside our little raft, with the two of us tumbled into the stern-sheets, amidst a chorus of congratulations and handshakings from Jorrocks, who was acting as coxswain; and, before we realised almost that we were rescued, we were safe on board the old ship again.
It was all like a dream, passing quite as rapidly!
The skipper, when I climbed the side ladder which had been put over for us, assisted up by a dozen pairs of willing hands, almost hugged me, and the crew gave me three cheers, which of course gratified my pride; but, what I valued beyond the praises bestowed on me for jumping overboard after Mr Macdougall—which was a mere act of physical courage which might have been performed by any water-dog, as I told Jorrocks—was the consciousness that I had made a friend of one who had previously been my enemy, returning good for evil. It was owing to this only, I fervently believe, that my life was preserved in that perilous swim!
Mr Macdougall was ill for some days afterwards, the shock and exposure nearly killing him; still, before the end of the week he was able to return to duty, a much changed man in every respect. Thenceforth, he treated the men with far greater consideration than previously, and he was really so painfully humble to me that I almost wished once or twice that he would be his bumptious, dogmatic old self again. However, it was all for the best, perhaps, for we all got on very sweetly together now, without friction, and harmony reigned alike on the poop and in the fo’c’s’le.
The south-easterly wind, which had sprung up so fortunately for our rescue, lasted the Esmeralda until she had run down the coast of Patagonia to Cape Tres Puntas, some three hundred and twenty miles to the northward of the Virgins, as the headlands are called that mark the entrance to the Straits of Magellan.
Of course, our skipper did not intend to essay this short cut into the Pacific, which is only really practicable for steamers, as the currents through the different channels are dangerous in the extreme, and the winds not to be relied on, chopping round at a moment’s notice, and causing a ship to drop her anchor in all sorts of unexpected places; but he intended to go through the Straits of Le Maire, instead of going round Staten Island, and thus shorten his passage of Cape Horn in that way.