“‘Do you know,’ said I, ‘that we have been very nearly forty days at sea?’
“‘Ay, sir,’ he answered, ‘I know it only too well.’
“‘We’re provisioned, Mr. ——,’ said I, giving him his name, ‘for one hundred and ten days, counting for our crew only. But if you add fourteen to eleven you get twenty-five, and that’s the number of people our provisions must now serve for.’
“He grew very thoughtful, and took a long look round at the weather.
“‘I fear,’ continued I, ‘that it will merely be tempting Providence to pursue our voyage with all these extra men aboard in the face of the ill-luck that’s dogged us for near upon forty days. If we’re to make no more headway than we’ve already done in the same time, I’m afraid,’ said I, pointing to the wreck that was slowly drawing abeam of us, ‘we shall be as badly off here as if we turned to and shipped ourselves aboard yonder hulk.’
“‘That’ll be about it, sir,’ said he. ‘The harness cask, to say nothing of the scuttle-butts, is much too small for fourteen extra hands, unless we’re to get a gale of wind astern of us.’
“‘Which we’ve got no right to expect,’ I answered.
“However, before I decided I thought I’d first take counsel with the captain we had rescued, and, on his waking up much refreshed in the afternoon, I put my position before him, and asked him for his opinion. He never hesitated when he heard how long we had been at sea and for how many days we had been provisioned. But I’m not sure that even his advice would have settled my resolution—for what can be more trying than to have to give up and go back, after beating about and toiling to get across for over a month?—had it not that same evening breezed up ahead with a stormy appearance. It was just as if the weather said, ‘No, you don’t.’ I took a look, listened a moment or two at the men singing out as they clewed up the topgallant-sails, and then told the mate to get his helm over and head the ship for the homeward passage.
“Now, sir, though it was disagreeable enough to have to go back after consuming so much time in getting forward, I was a good deal comforted by reflecting upon the cause that was sending me home. It was a cheerful thing, likewise, to see the men who had come aboard half-dead gradually recovering their health and spirits, and testifying their gratefulness by not only lending a hand with a will, but by striving to take all the work they could come at out of the hands of my crew. Besides, I will frankly own to you, sir, that I was buoyed up by the belief that any money difficulty that must follow my useless trip into the Atlantic—useless, I mean, in the commercial sense of that word—would be in some degree met by the owners of the craft whose people I had saved, and if not by them, then by the ‘authorities’—a sort of strange people who come into one’s head when one falls into an expecting mood, and stop there as if they were real and had all the disposition and power you fancy of ’em, though to my mind there’s no illusion to equal ’em, and ne’er a word in the English dictionary that makes a man fiercer to come across after he’s got, by writing letters and calling, to find out the true meaning of it.
“The nearest port was a French port, and there we arrived after a pretty quick run, and landed the rescued men, of whom I’ll say this—that their gratitude was such, that if they could have turned their bodies into gold so that we could have made sovereigns out of their flesh they’d have done it cheerfully. Well, sir, after I arrived in England, the first thing I did was to represent what I had done to the owners of the barque whose crew I had saved. I told them that I had been obliged to abandon my voyage in consequence of the assistance I had rendered, and that by so doing I had not only lost a voyage, but consumed the whole of my stores. No notice was taken of me; and when I complained to a friend who knows a good deal about the law, he said the wonder would have been if any notice had been taken, as I had no claim whatever on the owners of the barque for the rescue of the crew.