In this fashion these plain, simple-hearted souls of boatmen continued for sometime, with now and again an interlude in the direction of the spirit-jar, to bewail the loss of their unhappy shipmate. Our situation, however, was of a sort that would not suffer the shock caused by the man Thomas's death to be very lasting. Here we were in what was little better than an open boat of eighteen tons, lying dismasted, and entirely helpless, amid the solitude of a black midnight in the Atlantic Ocean, with nothing but an already wounded mast to depend upon when daybreak should come to enable us to set it up, and the lugger's slender crew less by one able hand!
It was still a thick and drizzling night, with a plentiful sobbing of water alongside; but the Early Morn, under her little mizzen and with her bows almost head to sea, rose and fell quietly. By this time the men had pretty well exhausted their lamentations over Thomas. I therefore ventured to change the subject.
'Now there are but two of you,' said I, 'I suppose you'll up with your mast to-morrow morning and make for home?'
'No fear!' answered Abraham, speaking with briskness out of the drams he had swallowed. 'We're agoing to Australey, and if so be as another of us ain't taken we'll git there.'
'But surely you'll not continue this voyage with the outfit you now have?' said I.
'Well,' said he, 'we shall have to "fish" the mast that's sprung and try and make it sarve till we falls in with a wessel as'll give us a sound spar to take the mast's place. Anyhow, we shall keep all on.'
'Ay, we shall keep all on,' said Jacob: 'no use coming all this way to tarn back again. Why, Gor' bless me! what 'ud be said of us?'
'But, surely,' said Helga, 'two of you'll not be able to manage this big boat?'
'Lord love 'ee, yes, lady,' cried Abraham. 'Mind ye, if we was out a-pleasuring I should want to get home; but there's money to take up at the end of this ramble, and Jacob and me means to airn it.'
Thus speaking, he crawled out to have a look at the weather, and was a moment later followed by Jacob, and presently I could hear them both earnestly consulting on what was to be done when the morning came, and how they were to manage afterwards, now that Thomas was gone.