“Perhaps they may have had boats,” I said, meekly. “Do you think boats could have reached the shore in such a storm?”
“Well,” answered the old captain, “they might have had boats, and they mightn’t; and the boats, supposing they had ’em, might have lived through the storm, and at the same time they mightn’t.”
This was not giving me much information, and I thought to myself that my friend the skipper did not seem so much inclined for a chat as usual. I turned to look at the sea in search of more pieces of wreck, when I discovered in the distance a dark speck rising out of the water. I pointed it out to the skipper at once, who took his glass out of his pocket, and after looking through it for a moment exclaimed,
“There’s something floating there, and a man clinging to it, as I’m alive!”
As he spoke my brother-in-law came on deck, and also took a look through the telescope. Then he, the captain and every sailor on board became eager and excited. You would have thought it some dear friend of each whose life was to be saved. The yacht was headed in the direction of the object, the boat was quickly lowered, the captain himself, with four sailors, jumping into it, and in another minute they caught in their arms a poor little exhausted and fainting boy as he dropped from the mast of a large sunken ship. We could now distinguish the tops of all the three masts appearing above the waves, for the sea was not deep, and the ship had settled down in an upright position.
Poor Charley Standish was soon in the cabin of the yacht, and after swallowing some champagne he revived sufficiently to tell us his story. The sunken ship was the “Melbourne,” bound for Australia, and this was Charley’s first voyage as a midshipman on board. During the darkness of the night she had been run into by a large homeward-bound merchantman of the same class. She sank within an hour of the collision. In the scramble for the boats Charley thought he had but little chance for finding a place; and as the ship filled and kept sinking deeper in the water, an instinct of self-preservation led him to climb into the rigging. Then up he went, higher and higher, even to the topmast; and at last, when the vessel went down all at once, he found himself, to his inexpressible relief, still above the surface.
What most astonished us all was that a boy so young should have been able to hold on for more than an hour to a slippery mast, exposed to the fury of the wind, and within reach, even, of the lashing waves. We sailed home at once to the Isle of Wight, and wrote to the boy’s mother, a widow living in London, to tell her of his safety. The boy himself stayed with us two or three days, until we bought him new clothes, and then went to his mother. Great was her joy when she once more clasped him to her loving heart. My brother-in-law took a great fancy to him. He has watched his career, and seen him at intervals ever since. Charley Standish is now a chief mate on board a great merchantman of the same class as the “Melbourne.”