The Tragedy of Ida Noble

by William Clark Russell

I stood up, weak and trembling, and searched the ocean, but there was nothing to be seen. Again and again I explored the horizon with eyes rendered dim by my long vigil and by the smarting of the salt which lay in a white crust about the eyelids and in the hollows, but there was nothing more to behold than the gray ocean, freckled with foam, throbbing desolately in the cold gray light to its confines narrowed by the low seat from which I gazed.

I had now no hope whatever of being searched for and picked up by my own ship. I did not doubt that she had pursued the Yankee, who had outsailed her and been lost sight of by her in the darkness, and that Captain Hoste, understanding the villainous trick that had been played upon him, but assuming that I, as well as the two men, had been detained by the American, had long ago shifted his course and proceeded on his voyage. I looked at my watch, but I had forgotten to wind it overnight, and it had stopped. By and by I reckoned the hour to be between eight and nine. There was no sun to tell the time by. Not until then was I sensible of hunger and thirst. Now on a sudden I felt the need of eating and drinking, and the mere circumstance of there being nothing to eat and drink—and more particularly to drink—fired my imagination, which at once converted thirst into a consuming pain, and I put my lips to my wet sleeve and sucked; but the moisture was bitter, bitter with salt, and I flung myself down into the bottom of the boat with a cry to God that, if I was to perish, my agony might come quickly and end quickly.

I believe I lay in a sort of stupor for some hour or more; then noticing a slight brightening in the heavens directly overhead, as though due to the thinning of the body of vapor just there, I staggered on to my feet, and no sooner was my head above the boat's gunwale than I spied a vessel steering directly for me, as I was immediately able to perceive. How far distant she was I could not have said, but my sailor's eye instantly witnessed the course she was pursuing by the aspect of her canvas, that was of a brilliant whiteness, so that at first I imagined her to be the American in search of me, until, after viewing her for some time steadfastly, I perceived that she was a large topsail schooner, apparently a yacht, heeling from the wind, and sliding nimbly through the water, as one might tell by the rapidity with which the whole fabric of her enlarged.

The sight gave me back all my strength. I sprang into the bows, dragged the oars inboard, and to one of them attached my coat, which I went to work to flourish, making the wet serge garment rattle like the fly of a flag as I swept it round and round high above my head. Within half an hour she was close to me, with her square canvas aback to deaden her way, the heads of a number of people dotting the line of her rail—a shapely and graceful vessel indeed, with a band of yellow metal along her waterline, dully glowing over the white edge of froth, as though some light of western sunshine slept upon her, her canvas gleaming like satin, a spark or two in her glossy length where her cabin port-holes were, and the brassy gleam of some gilt effigy under her bowsprit, from which curved to the masthead the lustrous pinions of her jibs and staysail.

A red-headed man wearing a cap with a naval peak stood abaft the main rigging in company with others, and as the beautiful little vessel came softly swaying and floating down over the heave of the swell to my boat, he cried out, "Can you catch hold of the end of a line?"

"Ay, ay," I answered, in a weak voice, lifting my hand.

"Then look out!" he bawled.

A seaman grasping a coil of rope sprang on top of the bulwarks and sent the fakes of the line spinning to me. I caught the end with a trembling grasp and took a turn round a thwart, but not till then could I have imagined how weak I was, for even as I held the rope my knees yielded and I sank into the bottom of the boat in a posture of supplication, half swooning. The next moment the little fabric had swung in alongside the schooner; I was grasped by some sailors and lifted on board.

"Let the boat go adrift, she's of no use to us," the red-headed man cried out.

Another standing near him exclaimed with a strong foreign accent, but in good English, "Stop! what name is written in her?"