The period was now approaching when we were to part company, the Gazelle for Jamaica, and the Midge for Havanna; and on such a day, Lanyard having received his orders, we altered our course a point or two to the northward, and lost sight of the commodore before the night fell.
Nothing particular occurred until we arrived within a couple of days' run of Havanna, when we made out a sail lying becalmed right a-head. We carried the breeze up to within half a mile of her, when it failed us also; and there we both lay rolling on the glass-like swell of the great Bahama Channel, one of the hottest quarters of the globe in a calm that ever I was in. The heat was absolutely roasting. The vessel we had seen was a brig with bright sides, which, as we approached, had hoisted a signal of distress at the mizen peak, the American ensign, with the stars down, and the stripes uppermost. A boat was immediately manned, and pulled towards her, for apparently she had none of her own. I went in her—any thing to break the tedium of a sea life. As we neared her, the crew, some six or eight hands, were seen running about the deck, and holding out their hands imploringly towards us, in a way that I could not account for. As we came closer, the master hailed in a low husky voice, "For Heaven's sake send us some water, sir, we are perishing of thirst—water, sir, water, for the love of God!" We were now alongside, when three men absolutely tumbled over the brig's side into the boat, and began, before we could recover our surprise, to struggle who should first get his lips into the small puddle of dirty water in the bottom of it. Brackish as it must have been, it was drank up in a moment. The extremity of the poor fellows was evidently great, so I jumped on deck, and the boat was immediately sent back for a breaker of water.
Sailors have their virtues and vices like other men, but I am not arrogating for them when I say, that a scene like this, in all its appalling bearings; that misery, such as we saw before us, so peculiarly incidental to his own condition, would, were it from this cause alone, thrill to a sailor's heart, with a force unknown and undreamt of by any other human being. Dogvane, the old quartermaster, had steered us on board. He now jumped up in the stern sheets, and cast off his jacket—"You, Jabos, you limber villain," said he to a slight boy who pulled the foremost oar, "come out of the bow, and take the tiller, will ye? and mind you steer steady. Shift forward, my hearties, and give me the stroke oar." The boat's crew at this hint tore their hats off, with a chance of a stroke of the sun before their eyes, and dashed them to the bottom of the boat, stripped up their frock sleeves to their armpits, undid the ribbons that fastened their frock collars, new-fitted their stretchers, and wetting the palms of their hands, feathered their oars, and waited for the word. "Now mind your strain, my lads," again sung out old Dogvane, "until the boat gathers way—no springing of the ash staves, do you hear? Give way now." The boat started off like an arrow—the oars groaned and cheeped, the water buzzed away into a long snow-white frothy wake, and in no time she was alongside the felucca, on whose deck, in his red-hot haste, the quartermaster first toppled down on his nose, and then, scarcely taking time to touch his hat to Mr Lanyard, we saw him bundle down the main hatchway; in another moment a small cask, ready slung, slowly ascended, and was rolled across the deck into the boat. But this was not all; the Midges on board the felucca were instantly all astir, and buzzing about at a devil of a rate—out sweeps was the word, and there was the black hull of the little vessel torn along the shining surface of the calm sea, right in the wake of the boat, by twelve long dark sweeps, looking for all the world, in the distance, like a beetle chasing a common fly across a polished mirror blazing with intolerable radiance under the noon-dav sun.
It appeared that, first of all, the brig had been a long time baffled in the Horse latitudes, which ran their supply of water short; and, latterly, they had lain a whole week becalmed where we found them. Several days before we fell in with them, they had sent away the boat with three hands to try and reach the shore, and bring back a supply, but they had never returned, having in all likelihood either perished from thirst before they got to land, or missed the brig on their way back. No soul on board, neither captain nor crew, had cooled his parched tongue for eight-and-forty hours before we boarded them—this in such a climate!
There was not only no water, but not a drop of liquid unconsumed of any kind or description whatever, saving and excepting some new rum, which the men had freely made use of at first, until two of them died raving mad in consequence. When I got on board, the cask was lying open on the tap, and, perishing as they were, not one of them could swallow a drop of it if they had tried; they said it was like taking aquafortis or melted lead into their mouths, when at any time they were driven, by the fierceness of their sufferings, to attempt assuaging their thirst with it. I had not been five minutes on board, when the captain seemed to go mad altogether.
"My poor wife, sir—oh, God, she is dying in the cabin, sir—she may be dead—she must be dead—but I dare not go below to look at her.—Oh, as you hope for mercy at your dying day, hail your people to make haste, sir—half an hour may be too late"—and the poor fellow dashed himself down on the deck, writhing about, like a crushed reptile, in a paroxysm of the most intense agony; while the men, who were all clustered half-naked in the bows, with wet blankets on their shoulders, in the hope that nature would in this way absorb some moisture, and thus alleviate their sufferings, were peering out with their feverish and blood-shot eyes, and wan faces, at the felucca; watching every motion on board with the most breathless anxiety.
"There, there—there is the cask on deck—they are lowering it into the boat—they have shoved off—oh, great God in Heaven, we shall be saved after all!"—and the poor fellows raised a faint hurrah, and closed in on me, some shaking my hands, others dropping on their knees to bless me; while one poor creature lay choking on the hard deck in a fit of hysterical laughter, as if he had been a weakly woman.
The boat could not possibly be back under ten minutes; so I went below into the cabin, and never did I behold such a heart-rending sight. The small table that had stood in the centre had been removed; and there, stretched on a coarse wet blanket, lay a half-naked female—pale and emaciated—her long hair dishevelled, and hanging over her face, and down her back, in wet clotted strands, with a poor miserable infant puling and nuzzling at her wasted breast; while a black woman, herself evidently deep sunk in the same suffering, was sprinkling salt water from a pail on the unhappy creature and her child.
"Oh, massa," cried the faithful negress—"oh, massa, give missis some water, or him dead—I strong, can last some time yet—but poor missis"—and here she sobbed, as if her heart would have burst; but the fountains of her tears were dried up. The white female was unable to raise her head—she lay moaning on the deck, and mumbling audibly with her dry and shrunken lips, as if they had been ossified; but she could not speak.
"Keep a good heart, madam," said I—"we have sent on board for water—it will be here in a minute." She looked doubtingly at me, clasped her hands together above her child's head, and seemed to pray. I ran on deck—the boat, in an incredibly short time, was alongside again, with the perspiration pouring down the flushed faces and muscular necks of the kind-hearted fellows in her—their duck-clothing as wet and dank as a boat-sail in a race.