They stared fixedly; little wonder that they should be astounded by such an appearance as my ship exhibited. One of the several boats which hung at her davits was lowered, the oars flashed, and presently she was near enough to be hit with a biscuit; but when there the master, as I supposed him to be, who was steering, sung out, "'Vast rowing!" the boat came to a stand, and her people to a man stared at me with their chins upon their shoulders as if I had been a fiend. It was plain as a pikestaff that they were frightened, and that the superstitions of the forecastle were hard at work in them whilst they viewed me. They looked a queer company: two were negroes, the others pale-faced bearded men, wrapped up in clothes to the aspect of scarecrows. The fellow who steered had a face as long as a wet hammock, and it was lengthened yet to the eye by a beard like a goat's hanging at the extremity of his chin.
He stood up—a tall, lank figure, with legs like a pair of compasses—and hailed me afresh, but the high swell, regular as the swing of a pendulum, interposed its brow between him and me, so that at one moment he was a sharply-lined figure against the sky of the horizon, and the next he and his boat and crew were sheer gone out of sight, and this made an exchange of sentences slow and troublesome.
"Say, master," he sung out, "what d'ye say the schooner's name is?"
"The Boca del Dragon," I replied.
"And who are you, matey?"
"An English sailor who has been cast away on an island of ice," I answered, talking very shortly that the replies might follow the questions before the swell sank him.
"Ay, ay," says he, "that's very well; but when was you cast away, bully?"
I gave him the date.
"That's not a month ago," cried he.
"It's long enough, whatever the time," said I.