"How do you feel?" asked the mate. "God help us, we were looking for you in the wrong direction, till, all at once, I remembered you ought to be to windward, and so at last made you out, a mere speck on the horizon. We had a hard pull to reach you too! At first I thought we should be swamped. But here you are safe. And now, lads, give way lustily."
The crew, at these words, put double strength into their oars, and away we sped toward the ship. What a sensation of comfort and security came over me as I felt the planks under me, and heard the waters, which, cheated of their prey, followed roaring in our wake.
I looked up toward the mate, who, steering with one hand, was covering me with his jacket with the other. He was doing it, too, as tenderly as a mother wraps her babe. Oh! how full my heart was. I tried to raise myself on my elbow and speak.
"Nay! shipmate," he said, placing his hand on my shoulder gently, as if to press me down, "not a word. You need rest: you were three hours in the water."
In truth, this little exertion had made me dizzy. I heard his words as in a dream, and sunk back, while all things seemed to whirl around me. I closed my eyes, and presently, in a whisper, the mate said—
"He sleeps. I don't think he could have stood it five minutes longer. Who would have told his mother?"
From this time until I woke in my berth, I lay in a state of profound insensibility. They have since told me that on reaching the ship they thought me gone; but that by chafing my limbs, and employing stringent restoratives they recovered me. I soon after sunk into a refreshing sleep, and when I woke in the morning was perfectly well, though weak.
It was quite dark, it appears, when we reached the ship, so that if my discovery had come a few minutes later, it is exceedingly doubtful whether or not I could have been saved.
Years have passed since then, and I have rehearsed my deliverance a hundred times, yet I always shudder to recall those terrible hours when Overboard in the Gulf.