“You need not go any nearer to her, at any rate,” replied Gregory, somewhat shaken by this argument; for all the students had been thoroughly schooled in the lesson of humanity, that every sailor was bound to assist every other sailor in distress.
The captain made no further reply to the first officer. Possibly he did not run the steamer as near to the wreck, for he directed the course, as he might have done if Gregory had said nothing.
The Ville d’Angers was stopped on the quarter of the wreck, and at about half a cable’s length from it.
“How many have you on board?” asked O’Hara, taking the trumpet from the officer of the deck.
“Thirty-two,” replied the spokesman of the wreck.
“Are you the captain?”
“No; he is down with fever: I am the mate.”
“How many sick have you?”
“All but three men,—myself and two seamen. Five of the crew have died, and eight are sick.”
It appeared from the answers of the mate, that the Castle William had left Calcutta with a crew of sixteen, including the officers. She had in her steerage twenty-one disabled soldiers, among whom the typhoid-fever had broken out after she left St. Helena, where she had put in for supplies. At this place she had received a sailor to work his passage; and, when the ship had been out a week, he was taken down with the small-pox. They had made a place for him in the head; but five of the crew had already died with this disease and the fever. Six more were sick with the fever, and two with the small-pox.