It seemed that Leroyd had learned that the plans of himself and his friends to delay the departure of the whaleback from New York had failed, and that the steamer had touched at Savannah and departed the very night the Success got in.
Finding that Sneaky Al had already arrived by steamship from New York, he promised Captain Frank an extra hundred dollars if he would land only a portion of his goods and set sail for the Bermudas again.
The brig’s commander could not resist this temptation, and therefore the Success lay at Savannah but a day and two nights. Then, with Messrs. Weeks and Leroyd aboard, she had sailed directly for that part of the ocean in which the whaleback had run across her during the gale.
Brandon also elicited the information that the brig had not been successful in her search—had not seen a derelict, in fact, since leaving Savannah—and that Leroyd was in a fiendish temper before the gale came up.
When that began, he and his friend, Weeks, turned to with the brig’s crew and did all they could to keep her afloat. Captain Frank, however, was crushed under a falling spar and instantly killed when the gale first started in, and the first officer was washed overboard.
When the brig became unmanageable and the crew rushed for the boats, nobody thought, or at least nobody stopped, for the bereaved girl in the cabin. She discovered that the crew had gone and left her only by coming on deck after the water had begun to fill the cabin.
Brandon and the captain’s daughter had ample time, before the sun appeared, to get very well acquainted with each other.
Don told her all about himself, about the object of the voyage of the whaleback, and of the plot concocted by his uncle Arad and Messrs. Leroyd and Weeks to find the Silver Swan and obtain the treasure aboard her themselves.
As soon as it did grow light, Brandon made his way below again and after a great deal of trouble lit an oil lamp and heated a little water over its blaze. He was then able to make some warm drink for Swivel and Milly, denying himself until she had swallowed some, and between them they had forced a little of the mixture between the injured boy’s lips.
After this Swivel brightened up a bit, and, as he did not try to talk, the hemorrhage did not return. But he was very weak.