"I have no time to enter minutely into what happened till we made a small point of land in the neighbourhood of the Friendly Islands. There was abundance of provisions on board, plenty of fresh water, and a stock of spirits intended for the commandant and soldiers at Macquarie Harbour and Norfolk Island; but though the convicts freely used whatever they found in the brig's hold, never once was there an instance of drunkenness amongst them. I guessed them all to be as desperate a set of miscreants as were ever transported for crime upon crime from a convict establishment; yet they used me very well. Saving their villainous speech, their behaviour was fairly decorous. They sprang to my bidding, sir'd me as though they had been seamen and I their captain, and, indeed, by their behaviour so reassured me that my dread of being butchered vanished, and I carried on the brig as assured of my personal safety—providing I dealt by them honestly—as though I had been on board the old Swan.
"We sighted several vessels, but, as you may suppose, we had nothing to say to them. Off the first island we came across I hove the brig to; the convicts got the long-boat out, and a dozen of them went ashore to examine and report. Five returned; the remainder had chosen to stay. We made three of the islands; the natives of two of them were threatening, and frightened the convicts back to the brig; the third proved uninhabited—a very gem of an island was this,—and here fifteen convicts went ashore, and thrice the boat went between the island and the brig with provisions and necessaries for their maintenance.
"But it gave me a fortnight of anxious hunting to discover such another island as the remaining convicts considered suitable. This at last we fell in with midway betwixt the Union group and the Marquesas; and here the rest of the felons went ashore, after almost emptying the brig's hold of provisions and the like. They kept the long-boat, and left me alone in the brig. Some of them shook hands with me as they went over the side, and thanked me for having served them so honestly.
"It was in the evening when I was left alone. The sun was setting behind the island, off which a gentle breeze was blowing. My first business was to run the ensign aloft, jack down. I then trimmed sail as best I could with my single pair of hands, and, putting the helm amidships, let the brig blow away south-west, designing to make for one of the Navigator Islands, where I might hope to fall in with assistance, either from the shore or from a vessel. But, shortly after midnight the brig, sailing quietly, grounded upon a coral shoal, fell over on to her bilge, and lay quiet. I was without a boat, and could do nothing but wait for daylight, and pray for a sight of some passing vessel. All next day passed, and nothing showed the wide horizon round; but about nine o'clock that night, the moon shining clearly, I spied a sail down in the south. She drew closer, and proved a little schooner. I hailed her with a desperate voice, and to my joy was answered, and in less than ten minutes she sent a boat and took me aboard."
The South Seaman's narrative ends abruptly here, but it is known that he was conveyed to Honolulu, at which place, strangely enough, the Swan touched after he had been ashore about a week. He at once went on board, related his strange experiences to his captain, and proceeded on his whaling career with the easy indifference of a sailor accustomed to tragic surprises.
The brig Cyprus went to pieces on the shoal on which she had grounded. It is on record that of the convicts retaken on their return to England, two were hanged—namely, Watts and Davies; two others, Beveridge and Stevenson, were transported for life to Norfolk Island; and Swallow was sent back to Macquarie Harbour.
The Adventures of
Three Sailors.
TOLD BY DANIEL SMALL, ONLY MATE.
Our vessel was a little brig, named the Hindoo Merchant, and we sailed on a day in March in the year of our Lord 1857, from Trincomalee bound to Calcutta. The captain, myself, and three sailors were Europeans; the rest of the ship's company, natives. Though we were "flying light" as the term is—that is to say, though there was little more in the ship's hold than ballast, and though she had tolerably nimble heels, for what one might term a country-wallah—yet the little ship was so bothered with head winds and light airs, and long days of stagnation, that we had been several weeks afloat before we managed to crawl to the Norrad of the Andaman parallels, which yet left a long stretch of waters before us. If this remainder of the ocean was not to be traversed more fleetly than the space we had already measured, then it was certain we should be running short of water many a long while before the Sandheads came within the compass of our horizon, and to provide against the most horrible situation that the crew of a ship can find themselves placed in, we kept a bright look-out for vessels, and within four days managed to speak two; but they had no water to spare, and we pushed on.
But within three days of our speaking the second of the two vessels we sighted a third, a large barque, who at once backed her topsail to our signals, and hailed us to know what we wanted. My captain, Mr. Roger Blow, stood up in the mizzen-rigging and asked for water. They asked how much we needed; Captain Blow responded that whatever they could spare would be a god-send. On this they sung out: "Send a boat with a cask and you shall have what we can afford to part with." Captain Blow then told me to put an eighteen-gallon cask in the port-quarter boat, and go away to the barque with it. "They'll not fill it," said he, "but a half'll be better than a quarter, and a quarter'll be good enough; for we stand to pick up more as we go along."