“‘Well, sir, it’s strange,’ I exclaimed, ‘and that’s about the amount of it. I’ve somewhere heard of men rescued in a starving state from a desolate island through a dream. The captain’s nephew was the dreamer, I think. The same vision troubled him three times, as yours did. He was a young Frenchman, and the dream made him importunate. The skipper shifted his helm to oblige the lad, and on sighting the island or rock found a little company of gaunt Selkirks upon it.’
“Thus we reasoned the matter awhile; he conversed as though he was worried at heart; when I went on deck, however, I flattered myself I had left him with an easier mind.
“He did not afterwards in that day refer to the subject, nor next morning when he came out of his cabin soon after sunrise, did he tell me that he had again been troubled in his sleep by that mysterious haunting cry, sounding across the black cold ocean of his dreams like the noise made by a whale, when it spouts its fountain to the stars in some midnight hush.
“A few days after we had had that talk I have just repeated, almost immediately on making eight bells by our sextant, a man on the forecastle hailing the quarter-deck bawled out that there was a small black object on the lee bow. Captain Huddersfield levelled the telescope, and said the thing was a ship’s quarter-boat with a man standing up in her. The weather was quiet at this time, the breeze a light one. The schooner was rippling leisurely forward with an occasional flap of her canvas that flashed a light as of the sun itself into the blue air all about the masts. The junction of sea and sky was in haze, with here and there a dim blue shadow of cloud poised coast-like upon the horizon.
“I took the glass from the captain and made out a boat with a mast but no sail. The figure of a man stood erect, and one arm hooked the mast. We shifted our helm, and presently had the boat alongside.
“Two men were in her. One lay motionless under the thwarts. The other, though erect on his feet, had barely strength to catch the rope’s end that was flung. The boat was of the ordinary pattern of ship’s quarter-boat. Whilst we leaned over the side looking down into her, the captain said—
“‘What is the name written in the stern-sheets there?’
“My sight was good. I answered, ‘Prairie Chief.’
“He started, and turned pale, with a look of astonishment and horror, but said nothing.
“Meanwhile, the two men were being got aboard. One was lifeless, and his looks seemed to tell of his having been frozen rather than starved to death. They were both dressed in the plain garb of the merchant sailor. The one that lived was assisted forward and disappeared in the forecastle in the company of two or three sympathizing seamen of our crew. Nothing so appeals to the humanity of the British sailor as the misery that is expressed by the open boat. In this case no appeal could have been more complete. I jumped into the little craft in obedience to the captain’s orders and overhauled her, and found nothing to eat or drink. Her cargo was an empty beaker and some fragments of canvas which appeared to have been chewed. The very heart within me sickened at the story of anguish that was silently related by those dusky, dough-like lumps of canvas. We hoisted the boat aboard. The weather permitted us to do that, and she was too good and useful a boat to lose.