The ship was rapidly drifting down to leeward, and I knew that if not soon discovered I was lost, so I shouted again.
"Aho-o-y!—A-hoy!—A-hoy!—Aho-o-y!"
The last word was frantically prolonged, and I watched its effect for a full minute with intense anxiety. It was evident from the manner in which my comrades on board glanced anew around the horizon, as also from the shouts which they uttered in reply, that my cry had reached them. I could not indeed hear their hail, but saw their hands to their mouths as when persons shout loudly. Alas! the same fatal error of still looking in the wrong direction prevailed among them: not an eye was turned to windward. My heart died within me.
"Oh, God!" I cried, "they do not hear me, and I am lost. My mother—my poor, poor mother."
I forgot to mention that, on my falling overboard, the cook, who had been cleaning knives in the galley, had mechanically flung the board he was using into the sea. Luckily it floated near me, and catching it, I placed it, end up, under my chin, and thus supported my head above the water without difficulty. But for this, perhaps, I should have been wearied out already by the surges which would have broke over me continually, but which I now generally rode. I also had on my oilskin cap and coat: an equally fortunate circumstance.
After giving way, therefore, for a few minutes to despondency, as I saw the ship drifting off, I rallied myself, and, reflecting that hope never dies while there is life, began to consider my situation more calmly. The comparative buoyancy of my dress, added to the board I had so fortunately obtained, would enable me to keep afloat for an hour, or perhaps for even a longer period, and in that time what chances might not turn up! I knew the Gulf was crowded with vessels. I had observed a French frigate, lying-to, to windward, just before I fell overboard. The direction in which I was drifting would carry me near her, when I might be more fortunate in attracting attention. I cheered my heart with this reflection, and began to look out for the man-of-war.
My first object, in this new frame of mind, was to get rid of my boots, which were by this time full of water, and began sensibly to drag me down. With great difficulty I succeeded in pulling them off; for I had to retain hold of my board with one hand while I worked at the boot with the other. At last I was rid of those dangerous encumbrances, and, floating more lightly, had a better opportunity to look around. Of course my vision of distant objects was cut off every moment by my being carried down into the trough of the sea. No one, who has not been in a similar situation, can appreciate the awfulness with which I gazed on the dark, glistening sides of the immense billows, as I saw myself sinking away from them, as if to the very bottom of the ocean. With what horrid mockery the glassy waters seemed to rise mountain high all around me. Suddenly, when I was at the lowest, I would begin to ascend, as if by magic, from that gloomy gulf, my velocity increasing every instant, until at last I would shoot upward above the crest of the wave, like an arrow propelled from the abyss. A toss of the head, to shake off the water, a long drawn breath, to recover myself, a hasty glance around, and then I was whirled downward again, half smothered in the wild abyss.
I had been overboard half an hour before I caught sight of the French frigate. When at last I beheld her, I could scarcely restrain a cry of joy. She was drifting rapidly toward me, and would pass within hail. How beautiful she looked! Her symmetrical hull, that floated buoyantly as some wild-fowl: her tall spars, unrelieved by a single bit of canvas, except the close-reefed maintop-sail under which she was lying-to: these, penciled against the horizon, formed together a picture of grace and beauty unsurpassed. Now she would pitch head-foremost into the sea; now slowly rise dripping from the deluge. Here and there a look-out was visible dotting her rigging. As she swung, pendulum-like, the wild and whirling clouds that rapidly traversed the distant sky seemed one moment to stand still, and then to speed past her with accelerated velocity. In the midst of peril as I was I still felt all the charm of this picture.
Suddenly I reflected—what if I should miss the frigate? There were other vessels in sight, but none in my track, for by this time I could calculate, with some approach to accuracy, the direction of my drift. Again the thought of my mother came up to me. I was her only son—her almost sole hope—the comfort and darling of her old age. Perhaps even now she was thinking of me. I seemed to see her silver hair, and hear her mild voice once more. Then the vision of that gray head bowed in grief arose. I beheld her in the weeds of deep mourning, bent in body and prostrated in mind. They had told her that her child had been lost overboard months ago, and was now a thousand fathom in the sea. I groaned audibly. God knows, even in that awful hour, it was less of myself than of my mother I thought!
I was now rapidly approaching the frigate.