"Heaven help us!"
More from instinct than anything else Bluewater Bill cast himself flat on his face, clinging to a ring-bolt in the deck. Dazed and almost senseless, he felt the mighty onslaught of the wave, which, strong as was his grip, plucked him from his hold and sent him tumbling and half drowned into the lee scuppers. Fortunately he managed to get a firm grip on the mizzen shrouds and clung there till the wave had passed. As he staggered to his feet he gazed about him on the seemingly doomed ship.
He was alone.
Every soul on board but himself had been swept from the deck by that mighty mass of water.
For two days the storm tossed the ship about like a plaything. Her lone voyager had no means of knowing whither he was being driven. He ate at times mechanically and scarcely emerged on deck at all. The fear of sharing the fate of his comrades possessed him and he remained in the cabin, not knowing from one minute to the next whether the succeeding instant would not prove his last. At last, however, the storm blew itself out and Bluewater Bill ventured on deck.
What a sight met his gaze!
At first he thought he was dreaming.
All about him for miles—as far as he could see in fact—stretched a gently-heaving, brown expanse. It looked like a vast prairie. From it rose the sharp, pungent odor peculiar to seaweed and the old mariner had no difficulty in recognizing the stunning fact that he was adrift in the Sargasso Sea of which he had heard so many ominous tales.
The realization was a shocking one. It meant, as he knew, that he was to all intents and purposes a doomed man. Despairingly he gazed about him and almost uttered a shout as at a distance of not more than a mile or two he made out the outlines of a queer-looking three-masted ship. Here at least was company. Obtaining the glasses, which the ill-fated skipper had left in his cabin, the mate of the Eleanor Jones scanned the neighbor vessel eagerly. She was as motionless under the cloudless blue dome of the sky as the ship on which he stood.
But she seemed to have men on board of her.