Several deaths had already occurred from lack of food and drink; the captain died a week before the encounter of the ships, and the second mate died on the same day. All the men had succumbed except those I have mentioned,—the four that Mr. Johnson found on deck, four in the forecastle, and the first mate in the captain's cabin.
It was plain that the crew of the Warwick, exhausted as they were by famine and death, would be unable to navigate the ship safely to port. When we met them they were drifting much more than sailing; the weather had been very mild for the past fortnight, so the Warwick's mate told us, and it was due to this circumstance, he added, that they were alive.
"If a gale had come up," said he, "we couldn't have done anything to meet it. We couldn't have stowed a sail or tautened a brace, and there isn't strength enough in all the crew together to put the ship's wheel hard over and hold it there. You'll have to take us into port, or else stay by us till we get strength enough to do it ourselves."
When Mr. Johnson came back and reported this our captain called his officers into the cabin and held a consultation. Exactly what was said I don't know; but when they came out on deck the captain gave orders for twenty barrels of beef, and a corresponding amount of other provisions, together with a good supply of water, to be put on board the Warwick. While this was going on, our mate went to the Warwick and had a talk with her mate; I suppose I ought to call him captain, as that is what he really was at the time. When he came back there was another conference, and then our second officer and six men were transferred to the other ship.
Soon after the transfer was made the men on the Warwick, I mean those that had been put aboard by the Washington, made sail as quickly as they could and steered away to the eastward. We did the same thing, and the two ships went along together, keeping from a few hundred yards up to two or three miles apart. The indications were that we were to sail in company, and an hour or two later I learned from Haines that my surmise was correct.
"The old man has planned it," Haines explained, "that we shall keep along, side by side, just as well as we can. The Warwick appears to be about as good a sailer as the Washington, and though we lose a little time in keeping together it won't be very much."
"But suppose," I asked, "a squall comes up in the night and blows us apart, so that we can't see anything of each other next morning, what then?"
"Oh, it's easy enough to fix that," Haines answered, "and that's fixed already. If we get blown apart we'll meet at a point somewhere ahead; our captain will tell Mr. Johnson, perhaps I ought to call him Captain Johnson now, that we shall meet at a certain place. He'll give him the latitude and longitude every day where we are to meet at noon the next day, and the first ship that gets to that point will wait for the other."
"Oh, I understand," said I, "and that's a very good way of doing."