“A sail! a sail!” he shouted, as soon as he got near. “There’s a ship in sight, and she’s just entering the bay!”
“Vere?—vere?” cried Jan Steenbock, equally excited, running to meet him. “A sheep? You vas mat, mein pore vellow,—you vas mat!”
“Jee-rusalem—no, he ain’t!” exclaimed Hiram, who, standing on the summit of the little mound by the entrance to the cave, could see further out to sea than Jan from below. “Tom’s all right. Hooray! It’s a shep sure enuff, an’ she’s now tarnin’ the p’int on the starboard side over thaar!”
With that we all looked now in this direction; and, oh, the blessed sight! There, as Hiram said, was a vessel under full sail rounding the opposite cliff and coming into the bay!
“My golly! I shell bust—I’se so glad!” cried poor Sam, dancing, and shouting, and laughing, and crying, all in one breath. “Bress de Lor’! Bress de Lor’!”
What I and the rest did to express our joy under the circumstances it would be impossible to tell; but I’m pretty sure we were quite as extravagant in our actions and demeanour as the negro,—if not so hearty in our recognition of the all-wise Providence that had sent this ship to our rescue!
There is little more to add.
The vessel soon cast anchor in the bay; and on her lowering a boat and reaching the beach where, as may be supposed, we eagerly awaited its coming, we found out that she was a whaler, full of oil, and homeward bound to San Francisco, her captain putting in at Abingdon Island for fresh water and vegetables, as some of his crew were suffering from scurvy, and they had run short of all tinned meat on board, having only salt provisions left.
We were thus enabled to mutually accommodate each other, Hiram, and Sam, and Tom Bullover, soon fetching a big store of green stuff from our plantation in the valley, besides securing a batch of tortoises for the men in the boat to kill and take on board; while Jan Steenbock and I went with the whaler’s captain to point out our water-spring near the cave, where the doves’ grove used to be, the stream from the hills still finding its way down there to the sea below, although the little lake, or pool, had become dried up by the accumulation of sand and the trees all disappeared.
In return for these welcome supplies, the captain of the whaler gladly agreed to give us all a free passage to ‘’Frisco’; although as I need hardly tell, he would have willingly done this without any such consideration at all, after hearing our story and being made acquainted with the strange and awful catastrophe that had befallen our ill-fated ship.