“‘Where away?’ ‘Over the starboard quarter.’
“‘How big?’ ‘As big as a pail of water.’
“‘Bear down to her, helmsman, and yon cook, bring my big glass.’ So I brings it, and ’twas a big jinted thing, and ‘twould bring any thing ever so fur off as nigh as you pleased. Captain looks and says, ‘It’s a man on a buoy.’ And as we got nearer, sure enough we could see him; and the captain cries, ‘down with the small boat, man her strong, put out for him and handle him carefully.’ And bein’ pretty anxious, I was the first man aboard, and we come along side on him and lifts up his head, and he says in a weak voice, ‘Oh! my God’ don’t hurt me!!’ And we lifts him up, and still he hangs to the buoy, and we told him to let go. And he says, ‘I will, if you won’t let me fall;’ and we told him we wouldn’t, and he let go reluctantly, and we took him in; and his breast, where he lay on the buoy, was worn to the bone, where he’d hugged it, and the motion of the waves had chafed him so. Well, we got him down in a berth, and the captain tries to talk with him, but he couldn’t speak, and we changes all the clothes on him that was left, and feeds him with cracker and wine; and the captain sets and feels of his pulse, and says once in a while, ‘he’s doin’ well’: and then he fell asleep, and slept an hour as calm as a baby, and the captain told me to wash him in Castile soap-suds, and says he, ‘we’ll have a new sailor in a hurry.’
“I prepares my wash and he wakes up, and says, ‘how in the name of God did I come here?’ so we told him, and the captain says, ‘you hungry?’ ‘Yis.’ And I fed him a leetle more and washed him; and oh! how he swore, it smarted so. ‘Where’s the captain,’ says he. ‘Here.’ ‘Captain, have you got any rum?’ ☜ And so he ordered him some weak sling, and arter this he seemed a good deal stronger, and then the captain sets his chair down by him, and asks him who he was and where he come from?
“He says, ‘my name is Tom Wilson, and I was born in Bristol, England, and lived there till I was sixteen, and then sailed for Boston, and followed the seas twenty years, and at last was pressed aboard an English man of war in London. I escaped, and got on board a French ship, and started for America in a merchantman. We’d made ’bout half v’yge when a tremendous storm riz, and we was stove all to pieces, and every body and every thing went down, for all I know, and I took to a big cork buoy as my only hope. The last I see of the wreck was two days arter this. Well, I hung to my buoy, and floated on, and on, and it got, calm, and it got to be the fifth day, and I thought I must give up. I lost all sense enemost, and didn’t know what did happen, till I beard your boat come up, and then my heart fluttered; and now is the first time for days I know what I am about. And this is the second time I have been cast away and not a man aboard saved but myself. How long I was aboard the buoy arter I lost my sense, I can’t say, but it seems to me it was some days, but I an’t sartin. Now captain, if I get well, make me one of your men.’
“The captain says, ‘I will, Tom.’
“Well, he got up fast, and eat up ‘most all creation, he was so nigh starved; and when he got able to work ship-tackle, he turns out to be a great sailor, but an awful wicked man, for every breath heaved out an oath.
“Well, in twenty-one days from the West-Indies, we made the New York Light, and then there was rejoicin’ enough I tell ye. I know I was glad enough, and as soon as we got hauled up, I jumped ashore and the first thing says I,
“Here’s a Free Nigger.” ☜