This task accomplished, he proceeded to collect from the wreck such other articles as he fancied might be of service to him; and, thus occupied, he spent several days on the spot where the Pandora had gone to pieces.
The slight breezes that arose from time to time, and again subsided, had not separated his raft from the other objects still left floating near. In whatever direction they went, so went he: since all were drifting together.
The idea had never occurred to the negro to set up a sail and endeavour to get away from the companionship of the inanimate objects around him,—souvenirs as they were of a fearful disaster. Or rather it had occurred to him, and was rejected as unworthy of being entertained. Snowball, without knowing much of the theory of navigation, had sufficient practical acquaintance with the great Atlantic Ocean,—especially that part of it where lies the track of the dreaded “middle passage,”—long remembered by the transported slave,—Snowball, I say, was sufficiently acquainted with his present whereabouts, to know that a sail set upon his raft, and carrying him hither and thither, would not add much to the chances of his being rescued from a watery grave. His only hope lay in being picked up by some passing vessel; and, feeling convinced of this, he made no effort to go one way or the other, but suffered himself to be drifted about, along with the other waifs of the wreck, whithersoever it pleased the winds or the currents of the ocean to carry him.
Chapter Nineteen.
Snowball at Sea on a Hencoop.
For six days had Snowball been leading this sort of life, along with the little Lalee,—subsisting partly on the sea-steeped biscuit found in the barrel, and partly upon other provisions which had turned up among the drift; while the precious water contained in the keg had hitherto kept them from suffering the pangs of thirst.
During these six days he had never wholly surrendered himself up to despair. It was not the first, by several times, for the old sea-cook to have suffered shipwreck; nor was it his first time to be cast away in mid-ocean. Once had he been blown overboard in a storm, and left behind,—the ship, from the violence of the wind, having been unable to tack round and return to his rescue. Being an excellent swimmer, he had kept afloat, buffeting with the huge billows for nearly an hour. Of course, in the end, he must have gone to the bottom, as the place where the incident occurred was hundreds of miles from any land. But just as he was on the point of giving in, a hencoop came drifting past, to which he at once attached himself, and this being fortunately of sufficient size to sustain his weight, hindered him from sinking.
Though he knew that the hencoop had been thrown out of the ship by some of his comrades, after he had gone overboard, the ship herself was no longer in sight; and the unlucky swimmer, notwithstanding the help given him by the hencoop, must eventually have perished among the waves; but the storm having subsided, and the wind suddenly changing into the opposite quarter, the vessel was wafted back on her old track, and passing within hail of Snowball, his comrades succeeded in rescuing him from his perilous situation.