Picked up at Sea / The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek

by John C. Hutcheson

The two boys were bitterly disappointed.

Up to the time of their sighting the ship they had been almost contented with their lot, for the fear of starvation, which had threatened them, had passed away when their hunger had been appeased by the cape pigeon that David had captured, and they subsequently secured another bird, besides the half-dozen fish or so that had been brought within their reach by the waterspout; to add to which the weather had not been hot enough to cause them to make such inroads on their stock of water—which David had judiciously apportioned from the first—as to arouse any dread of thirst, which is far worse than want of food to shipwrecked mariners.

It was the fact of the means of escape from their perilous position having been so unexpectedly brought near them, and as suddenly taken away, that deprived them of their courage and hopefulness for a time, and made them forget the Eye that was watching over them, and the hand that had already so miraculously helped them when they seemed to be at death’s door! The weather, however, did not allow them to give way to despondency, much as they might have been inclined, for, as night came on, the darker it grew, the wind and sea increasing so that David had an onerous task to steer the boat in such a manner as to prevent her being swamped; while Jonathan was as continually busy in baling out the heavy seas that, partly, lurched in over the gunwale, first on the port side and then to starboard, as the cutter rocked to and fro in her course, tearing madly up and down the hills and valleys formed by the waves, and sometimes leaping clean out of the water from one mountainous ridge to another.

And thus, the weary hours passed till morning, without giving them a moment’s rest from their anxious labour, the constant fear of being overset and swallowed up by the tiger-like billows that raced after them banishing the feeling of fatigue, and making them forget for the while their disappointment.

When the sun rose, for the fourth time since they had been left deserted on the deep, the boys were completely worn out.

David’s leg, too, had got worse; whether from the exposure or not they could not tell, but it had swollen up enormously, and he could hardly move; so, Jonathan had to take his place at the steering oar, and act under his directions carefully, as the sea was still very high, and it required critical judgment and a quick eye to prevent the boat being taken broadside on by any of the swelling waves that followed fast in their track, raising their towering crests and foaming with impotent fury as far as the eye could reach, astern, and to their right hand and their left, while in front the waters sometimes uplifted themselves into a solid wall, as if to stop their way. With mid-day, came a change of scene.

The wind gradually died away, and there fell a dead calm, while the sea subsided in unison; although a sullen swell remained, in evidence of old Neptune’s past anger, and to show that he had a temper of his own when he liked to use it—a swell that rocked the boat like a baby’s cradle, and flapped the loose sail backwards and forwards across their heads, in such a disagreeable manner that David suggested their hauling it down; which they did, the boat not rolling half so much without its perpendicular weight, while it was pleasanter for them.

“I tell you what, Dave,” suggested Jonathan after a while to his friend, who was stretched out on the stern-sheets, resting his wounded leg on a seat, “I think if you’d let me bandage your thigh with a strip of my shirt, and keep it soaked with water, the evaporation of the sun would take down the swelling and make it feel better?”

“So it would probably,” he assented; “and at the same time, Jonathan, get those fish and the bird out of the locker. I had almost forgotten them;—I suppose, because I don’t feel hungry yet! We will skin them and split them in two: and if we expose them spread out on top of the sail, which you can stretch across the thwarts, our old friend can cook them while he is acting as my physician.”

Jonathan, who had been tearing a couple of long strips off his shirt, and binding them round David’s leg while he was speaking, now soused the bandages with sea water, taking it up in the one uninjured boot which he had kept for baling purposes, and then propped it up in an easy position, so that it should be directly exposed to the rays of the sun, which was now almost vertical, and hotter than they had yet felt it. He then unstepped the mast, and arranged the sail like an awning over the rest of the boat, serving to shelter themselves—with the exception of David’s leg, of course—from the heat, which was decidedly more comfortable, and act as a table for their culinary arrangements.