“It must have been past midnight, when I thought I heard a kind of groaning or rumbling sound in the wind. I could not imagine what it could be, until, looking into the darkness on my right hand, I spied three lights upon the sea—one green, one red, and one white—this last much higher than the others. Soon after there was a heavy noise of washing water, and just over the white light there was a shower of sparks, and presently a great black shadow stood up on the sea and blotted out the stars behind it. I was weak and worn out—terrified to a degree by the swift approach of this steamer—and though I managed to shout, my voice seemed to stick in my throat. The great vessel swept past us not above twenty yards distant; saving those lamps she was all in darkness, and soon after she had gone by I thought the wherry would have upset in the waves the steamer had left behind. My wife screamed as the boat sprang up and down, and every instant I expected the sea to rush into us. I shouted again to the steamer, hoping that I might be heard. This time my voice carried well, but nothing came of it; the steamer rushed on, and was soon out of sight.
“The dawn was just breaking, when I saw a vessel making a black mark against the pale green light in the place where the sun was coming. It took me some time to find out which way she was going, but presently the rising sun made her plain, and I saw that she was a small smack, and that she aimed directly for us. I managed to stand up in the wherry and flourish my hat. There was no coast to be seen—nothing visible upon the sea but that smack. So far as water went, we might have been in the middle of the biggest ocean in the world. I perceived before long that the smack saw us, for she lowered one of her sails, and came along slowly. I looked at my wife to see how this adventure had served her, and it seemed to me that she had aged twenty years. Her face was hollow, her dress draggled and limp with the dew; she was a most melancholy object to look at. I hardly knew her, indeed; and she was equally astonished by my appearance, as she afterwards told me. Who could suppose that a night spent in an open boat at sea would work such a change in people’s looks? As for poor little baby, she had been crying on and off all night, and, being pretty nearly perished with hunger, she was a distressing thing, truly, for us parents to see. It was nearly three-quarters of an hour before the smack came close to us, counting from the time I had first seen her. A great man in yellow clothes bawled out, ‘What’s that boat, and what do you want?’ You might have supposed he would guess our want by our appearance.
“‘We’ve been carried away to sea,’ I answered, in a faint voice, for I felt as weak as an infant and just fit to cry like one, ‘and we’ve been in this boat all night.’
“‘Where do you come from?’ he called.
“I told him, and he answered, ‘We’ll tow you in. Look out for the end of the line;’ and another man threw a rope at me.
“I caught it, but did not know what to do with it; seeing which, the first man told me to keep hold, and dragged the wherry up to the smack, and then got into her and attached the line to the boat.
“‘Will you sit here or come aboard?’ he asked.
“‘Oh, come aboard, certainly,’ I replied; so he took the baby and passed it to a sailor on the smack, and then helped my wife up, and then me.
“So here we were, saved; but faint, broken-down, feeling as if we had been dug out of the grave. Luckily they had a few tins of Swiss milk in the cabin, and so poor little baby got something to eat at last. Also they gave us some corned beef and bread, which we devoured gratefully, after the manner of shipwrecked people. The captain of the smack laughed when I told him we had originally started for an hour’s row.
“‘How much do they charge you for an hour?’ says he.