“But may she not founder at any moment?” I said to Curtis, when I had joined him for a while upon the poop.
“Everything depends upon the weather,” he replied, in his calmest manner; “that, of course, may change at any hour. One thing, however, is certain, the ‘Chancellor’ preserves her equilibrium for the present.”
“But do you mean to say,” I further asked, “that she can sail with two feet of water over her deck?”
“No, Mr. Kazallon, she can’t sail, but she can drift with the wind, and if the wind remains in its present quarter, in the course of a few days we might possibly sight the coast. Besides, we shall have our raft as a last resource; in a few hours it will be ready, and at daybreak we can embark.”
“You have not then,” I added, “abandoned all hope even yet?” I marvelled at his composure.
“While there’s life there’s hope, you know Mr. Kazallon; out of a hundred chances, ninety-nine may be against us, but perhaps the odd one may be in our favour. Besides, I believe that our case is not without precedent. In the year 1795 a three-master, the ‘Juno,’ was precisely in the same half-sunk, water-logged condition as ourselves; and yet with her passengers and crew clinging to her top-masts she drifted for twenty days, until she came in sight of land, when those who had survived the deprivation and fatigue were saved. So let us not despair; let us hold on to the hope that the survivors of the ‘Chancellor’ may be equally fortunate.”
I was only too conscious that there was not much to be said in support of Curtis’s sanguine view of things, and that the force of reason pointed all the other way; but I said nothing, deriving what comfort I could from the fact that the captain did not yet despond of an ultimate rescue.
As it was necessary to be prepared to abandon the ship almost at a moment’s notice, Dowlas was making every exertion to hurry on the construction of the raft. A little before midnight he was on the point of conveying some planks for this purpose, when, to his astonishment and horror, he found that the framework had totally disappeared. The ropes that had attached it to the vessel had snapped as she became vertically displaced, and probably it had been adrift for more than an hour.
The crew were frantic at this new misfortune, and shouting “Overboard with the masts!” they began to cut down the rigging preparatory to taking possession of the masts for a new raft.
But here Curtis interposed:—