“She is on fire,” cried the girl, “and—Ave Maria! What is that?” she exclaimed, pointing to the bloody mass of whale that was on our beam.
We floated slowly down to the ship; the wind had blackened at sunrise, and our canvas was small. The sky was dark in the south whence the swell was running, and a bright blue all about the north and east. We approached the ship, and I saw many men on board of her watching us. Some of the faces showed in the telescope of a copper color, and I guessed they were natives of the South Sea Islands.
Miss Aurora teased me with questions, with sounding exclamations in Spanish and English. I begged her to hold her tongue. I wanted to think. Should I give the whole plain story of our voyage to the captain of that ship? Should I tell him that I had twelve tons of silver on board, and three prisoners of a crew who had possessed themselves of three tons, but who had meant to plunder the whole and bury it, and then wreck the brig? I hastily paced the deck, staring at the whaler and thinking with all my might. But a moment arrived when I could think no longer. I put the helm over, gave the wheel to Miss Aurora to hold, and with the help of Jimmy got the main topsail aback.
The two vessels then lay abreast within a cable’s length. A man stood in the mizzen rigging of the whaler; he was the same person that had hailed us in the Pacific. I jumped upon a gun and sung out, “Ho, the Virginia Creeper, ahoy!”
“Hallo!” answered the man near the mizzen rigging.
“We are but three, as you see,” I shouted, “Will you send a boat and come aboard? Our distress is great.”
The man responded with a quiet motion of his hand, lingered a moment or two as though to take a further survey of us, then called out an order, and a few moments later he had entered a boat and was being pulled across to us.
I received him in the gangway, and giving him my hand said, “We have met before.”
“Indeed, friend,” said he, “where might that have been?”
On my recalling the circumstance, he said in a sober voice, and without any air of surprise, “I remember.” Then looking leisurely at Miss Aurora he said, “Is that thy wife, friend?”