“Yes, sir,” was the answer.
“Then look out for a line.”
The boat came under the bow; a rope’s end was thrown and caught. The man languidly climbed into the fore-channels, omitting to secure the boat, which drove past and was already in our wake whilst the fellow was crawling over the side. Some of our seamen helped him over the rail, and he then came aft, walking very slowly, with an occasional reel in his gait, as though drunk or excessively weak.
He mounted the poop ladder with the assistance of a seaman. The moonlight was so bright it was almost the same as seeing things by day. He was a short, powerfully built man, habited in the Pacific beach-comber’s garb of flannel shirt and dungaree breeches, without a hat or shoes; his hair was long and wild, his beard ragged; he was about thirty years of age, with a hawksbill nose, and large protruding eyes, hollow-cheeked, and he was of the colour of a corpse as he faced the moon.
He begged for a drink and for something to eat, and food and a glass of rum and water were given to him before he was questioned.
He then told us he had belonged to the Colonial schooner Cordelia that had been wrecked five days before on a reef, how far distant from the present situation of our ship he did not know. The master and Kanaka crew left the wreck in what he called the long-boat. He said he was asleep when the schooner grounded. He did not apparently awaken until some time after the disaster; when he came on deck he found the schooner hard and fast and deserted. A small boat was swinging in davits; he lowered her and left the wreck, unable to bring away anything to eat or drink with him, as the hold was awash and the vessel quickly going to pieces and floating off in staves.
He delivered this yarn in a feeble voice, but fluently. Undoubtedly he had suffered; but somehow, as I listened, I could not satisfy myself that what had befallen him had happened just as he stated.
He asked what ship ours was, and looked round quickly when he was told she was the Walter Hood from Sydney bound to London. The captain asked him what his rating had been aboard the schooner; he answered, “Able seaman.” He was then sent forward into the forecastle.
I went below at four, and was again on deck at eight, and learned that the man we had rescued was too ill to “turn to,” as we call it. The ship’s doctor told me he was suffering from the effects of privation and exposure, but that he was a hearty man, and would be fit for work in a day or two. He had told the doctor his name was Jonathan Love, and that the Cordelia belonged to Hobart Town, at which place he had joined her. The doctor said to me he did not like his looks.
“I make every allowance,” he went on, “for hairiness and colour, and for the expression which the sufferings a man endures in a dry, starving, open boat at sea will stamp upon his face, sometimes lastingly. There’s an evil memory in the eyes of that chap. He glances at you as though he saw something beyond.”