Picked up at Sea / The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek

by John C. Hutcheson

“Looks like floating timber, sir. I can’t see anybody as yet; it seems all awash.”

A moment further of breathless suspense, and then those on deck could see for themselves what had attracted the lookout man’s notice—a black object, bobbing up and down amidst the waves, one minute raised aloft on a billowy crest, the next hidden from view in a watery valley that descended, as it were, into the depths of the ocean.

It was now clear to windward on the weather-bow; and, every now and then, distinctly visible.

“Put the helm down, slack off the sheet!” cried the captain; and, as the Sea Rover rounded-to, with the floating object under her lee, it could be seen that it was the boat which David and Jonathan had perceived passing them, bottom upwards, just before they were struck by the squall. The vessel, therefore, must have gone much further back on their track than they had imagined, for the boat must have been three or four miles astern of the point at which the boys were washed overboard. She would of course have drifted farther than the floating wreckage, being higher out of water, but could not have made up more than a mile of the intervening distance.

It was a grievous disappointment to all on board, crew and passengers alike. They had made certain that it was the two boys clinging to the wreckage of the bulwarks and wheelhouse that had been carried away along with Davy; and the disappointment was all the greater because their hopes had been so cruelly raised.

“My boy, my boy!” sobbed Mr Liston, who stood with several of the other cabin passengers grouped around the captain on the quarter-deck watching in breathless suspense. “My boy, my boy! He is lost, he’s lost! I shall never see him again!” and he wrung his hands in agony.

Poor, bereaved father! He had only that moment been made aware that his son was overboard, having been below when the accident happened to Davy, and only attracted on deck by the commotion. Johnny was his only child, his mother having died in giving him birth, and he was the apple of his eye. He would have jumped into the sea, too, when, he learnt what had happened, if he had not been prevented; and his grief was frantic.

“Cheer up, my dear sir!” said Captain Markham, as he gave orders for the ship to back across her course at right angles, and warned the lookout men aloft to renewed watchfulness. “We may pick them up yet. You know Davy Armstrong was holding on to something when he was carried away, and your gallant son took a life-buoy with him when he went to his rescue, so they can keep afloat till we overhaul them. Why, I was picked up myself once after I had been in the water for hours and the ship searching for me all the time, when I had been washed overboard like Davy.”

The captain’s sanguine anticipations, however, even if he really believed in them, were baseless.

The Sea Rover backed, and wore, and tacked again, sailing, within a radius of a few miles, in every possible direction the wind would let her, without finding any traces of the lost ones, or even coming across the pieces of wreckage, which the sombre tint of the sea and sky prevented their seeing; and then night came on, and they had to abandon their quest, although they burnt blue lights and cruised about the same spot for hours afterwards, in vain!