The ship Argonaut, bound for Calcutta, was speeding along with a fair wind, when the man at the lookout called:
"Boat in sight!"
"Where away?"
The sailor pointed, out a small boat a mile distant, nearly in the ship's track, rising and falling with the billows.
"Is there any one in it?"
"I see two men lying in the bottom. They are motionless. They may be dead."
The boat was soon overtaken. It was the boat from the ill-fated Norman, Captain Rushton and Bunsby were lying stretched out in the bottom, both motionless and apparently without life. Bunsby was really dead. But there was still some life left in the captain, which, under the care of the surgeon of the ship, was carefully husbanded until he was out of immediate danger. But his system, from the long privation of food, had received such a shock, that his mind, sympathizing with it, he fell into a kind of stupor, mental and physical, and though strength and vigor came slowly back, Captain Rushton was in mind a child. Oblivion of the past seemed to have come over him. He did not remember who he was, or that he had a wife and child.
"Poor man!" said the surgeon; "I greatly fear his mind has completely given way."
"It is a pity some of his friends were not here," said the captain of the ship that had rescued him. "The sight of a familiar face might restore him."
"It is possible, but I am not sure of even that."