“Where away? Point her out!” I struggled up, though it made my head swim.
None but a sailor would have recognized a vessel in that dark blotch away in the north. My heart thumped pretty loud when I sighted it, and realized that the craft was coming our way. We prayed for daylight,—or I did, anyway,—and it was the first prayer I’d said for years.
Well, the sun came up, and there was a large Englishman not four miles off. She couldn’t help seeing us, but we never stopped waving the carpenter’s coat—I had none—till they signalled us. No need to tell how we got picked up, or how glad we were to have a ship’s deck under our feet again. She proved to be the Scottish Glens, bound from Tacoma to Hamburg, and all hands were mightily interested in our story, several having seen the St. Lawrence sail the morning before.
There we were not a hundred miles from shore, but of course the captain wouldn’t put back, so there was nothing for it but to start on an eighteen-thousand-mile voyage. We worked our passage, and an awful one it was as far as length goes.
While entering the harbor of Hamburg, one hundred and ninety days later, a small boat came alongside with mail for the officers and crew. There was a large assortment of letters and papers bearing postmarks from all parts of the world; but the carpenter and I got nothing, nor did we expect anything, for our relatives must have long since given us up. One of the officers handed me a late copy of the Marine Register, and in the department of Disasters I found this item, which sounded like my obituary:
MISSING.
St. Lawrence (ship), Fairley, which sailed from Puget Sound April 7 for San Francisco, has never been heard of since, and is supposed to have foundered with all hands. Posted at Lloyd’s as missing.
A DANGEROUS CARGO.
The remarkable feature of a calm in the equatorial latitudes of the Pacific is the interesting appearance of the water, which literally teems with various forms of animal life. It is clear and limpid as crystal, and, viewed from the Lochleven’s deck, an endless procession of strange creatures slowly floated by with the current. Two shapeless blotches of film appeared, whose only sign of life was a great red eye at one end. They seemed to have less than the consistency of jelly, and represented one of the lowest forms of animal life. Next was a curious jointed creature of a deep orange tint, coiled up like a snake. Then a fragile nautilus was borne along, with the delicate pink shell projecting above the surface like a sail,—“Portuguese man-of-war” seamen call it,—while a bunch of long tentacles hung down beneath. Just over the stern were two active little fish the size of a brook trout, whose bodies were blue, with wide brown stripes. The pair swam side by side, occasionally darting away capriciously, only to return in a moment. How harmless and innocent they looked! And yet their presence was a certain indication that a shark lurked beneath the ship. One or two of these pilot-fish always accompany a shark to find his prey and lead him to it, for their ugly protector is lazy and nearsighted, and would fare badly without them. Close to the ship’s side a magnificent dolphin floated motionless in the translucent water; the beauty of his steel-blue and pale lemon tints being enhanced by the clear element until the splendid creature seemed too glorious to be real. So quiet was the ocean, so still the fish, that one might easily imagine it only the image of a dolphin reflected in a vast mirror.
Several hundred miles to the eastward of where the Lochleven lay becalmed were the Galapagos Islands, where thousands of turtles assemble, lay their eggs in the sand, and then float away with the current; sleeping on the water most of the time. A dozen were now in view at various distances from the ship, besides a big one that had just been captured, and was crawling awkwardly about the deck. Its great discolored shell, dead-looking eyes, and beak massive enough to sever a man’s wrist, gave little indication of the rich steaks and agreeable soup into which the cook promised to convert it on the morrow.