“There is a man in her, sir!” Frank now called out in a different tone of voice; “I can see him distinctly! He is trying to wave a handkerchief or something. He looks almost dead, poor fellow!”
The excitement on board at hearing this piece of news became all the more intensified.
“Are we nearing him?” shouted out Captain Dinks.
“Oh yes, sir; the boat bears now broad on the weather beam. Keep her steady as she is, and we can round-to close alongside. Look out, we’re getting pretty close now!”
“Look out forward there!” cried the captain: but several hands were there already with the first mate at their head, a coil of rope in his hand, on the watch to heave it over the boat as soon as she was approached near enough.
“Time to come about, sir,” hailed Frank from the cross-trees; and, “Hands ’bout ship!” roared out Captain Dinks, almost in the same breath.
During the bustle that ensued, those on the poop could not see what was going on forward; but when the Nancy Bell paid off again from the wind on the port tack—thus resuming again what had been her previous course before the boat had been sighted—it was found that the object for which they had gone out of their way was safely alongside.
It was a shocking sight!
Four dead bodies were stretched, in every conceivable attitude of agony, across the thwarts and in the bottom of the boat, which from its shape had evidently belonged to some whaling vessel; while, sitting up in the stern-sheets, close to the helm, which his feeble hands were powerless to grasp, was the living skeleton of another sailor, whose eyes seemed starting out from their deep sockets and whose lips appeared feebly endeavouring to shape the syllables of “wa-ter!”
In a second, Mr McCarthy had leaped down into the floating coffin as it towed alongside; and, lifting the body of the solitary survivor from amidst the corpses of his dead comrades, handed the light load—for the poor, starved creature did not weigh more than a child of ten, although a man of over six feet in height—up to hands that as carefully received him; and then, leaping back again on board himself, the whale-boat was scuttled by a plank being knocked out of her bottom and cut adrift, to sink with her mortal freight into the common grave of those who die on the deep, the stench from the remains being horrible and permeating the whole ship while the boat was in contact with her.