John Holdsworth, Chief Mate

by William Clark Russell

When, after long watching him, they knew that he was dead, they covered him over with the sail, meaning to commit him to the sea when the widow should be asleep.

Holdsworth was so greatly overcome that for many minutes he could not raise his head nor speak. The widow, with her eyes fixed on the water, sat motionless, a fixed image of despair. Her boy crept about the bottom of the boat at her feet, with somewhat weakly movements, though his body had not yet suffered enough to kill the infancy in his mind. The sailors, made selfish by the bitter disappointment of the morning, talked of their chances of rescue, and discussed the subject of the burning ship. Johnson probably solved the mystery of the deserted vessel when he suggested that during the night the hands had found the cargo on fire—and he judged by the blaze she made, and the smoke, and the long time she was smouldering, that she was freighted with cotton or coal—and had battened down the hatches; but not having the means of getting the fire under, they struck and took to the boats, obliging the skipper to go along with them, and left the vessel to her fate. Just such another case happened to a messmate of his in the Bay of Biscay. The crew left their ship smouldering under battened hatches. But she was boarded by a Frenchman, who smothered the fire and towed her into Bordeaux.

“Where was the brigantine’s crew, now?” Winyard wondered.

“I wish we could fall in with them, if only for company’s sake,” replied Johnson.

But of that there was very little chance.

All the afternoon the calm lasted, with light mists hanging in wreaths upon the horizon. But about the hour of sunset the smoke that had risen from the burning ship, and which had not drifted more than a couple of miles to the southward throughout the day, came sailing slowly towards the boat and passed high overhead, thinning its bulk as it travelled in an easterly direction. A light breeze heralded it; they hoisted the sail, put the boat’s head round, and stood east-south-east.

The night fell, but the light breeze held steady. When they thought Mrs. Tennent was asleep, they raised the body of the General in their arms from the bottom of the boat. The night was lustrous with yellow stars, which diffused sufficient light to enable them to see the old man’s face. The eyes were closed, and, though the under-jaw was fallen, there yet lingered an expression both of firmness and sweetness about the mouth. The draught under the sail moved his white hairs.

“Mates,” said Holdsworth in a whisper, “we pray that God has taken this noble gentleman’s soul to Himself, and that, though his body be dispersed in the sea, it will rise again at the Day of Judgment, in the shape we now behold it, to become a partaker of life everlasting, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The two sailors answered Amen!