I raised my right hand to free myself; but before I touched him, the sight of the man’s face close to mine made me drop my arm again. There was a speechless, breathless, frantic joy in it, that made all the blood in my veins stand still in a moment.
“Out with it!” I said. “Man alive, out with it, for God’s sake!”
His breath beat on my cheek in hot, quick, heavy gasps; but he could not utter a word. For a moment he let go of the mast (tightening his hold on me with the other arm) and pointed out westward—then slid heavily down on to the thwart behind us.
I looked westward, and saw that one of the two trustworthy men whom I had left at the helm was on his feet looking out westward, too. As the boat rose, I fixed my eyes on the strip of clear greenish sky in the west, and on the bright line of the sea just under it. The boat dipped again before I could see anything. I squeezed my eyelids together to get the water out of them, and when we rose again looked straight into the middle of the bright sea-line. My heart bounded as if it would choke me—my tongue felt like a cinder in my mouth—my knees gave way under me—I dropped down on to the thwart, and sobbed out, with a great effort, as if I had been dumb for weeks before, and had only that instant found my speech:
“A sail! a sail!”
The words were [instantly echoed] by the man in the stern-sheets.
“Sail, ho!” he screeches out, turning round on me and swinging his arms about his head like a madman.
This made three of our company who had seen the ship already, and that one fact was sufficient to remove all dread lest our eyes might have been deceiving us. The great fear now was, not that we were deluded, but that we might come to some serious harm through the excess of joy among the people; that is to say, among such of the people as still had the sense to feel and the strength to express what they felt. I must record in my own justification, after confessing that I lost command over myself altogether on the discovery of the sail, that I was the first who set the example of self-control. I was in a manner forced to this by the crew frantically [entreating me to lay-to] until we could make out what course the ship was steering—a proceeding which, with the sea then running, with the heavy lading of the boat, and with such feeble substitutes for mast and sail as we possessed, must have been attended with total destruction to us all. I tried to remind the men of this, but they were in such a transport—hugging each other round the neck, and crying and laughing all in a breath—that they were not fit to listen to reason. Accordingly, I myself went to the helm again, and chose the steadiest of my two men in the after-part of the boat, as a guard over the sheet, with instructions to use force, if necessary, toward any one who stretched out so much as a finger to it. The wind was rising every minute, and we had nothing for it but to scud, and be thankful to God’s mercy that we had sea-room to do it in.
“It will be dark in an hour’s time, sir,” says the man left along with me when I took the helm again. “We have no light to show. The ship will pass us in the night. Lay-to, sir! For the love of Heaven, give us all a chance, and lay-to!” says he, and goes down on his knees before me, wringing his hands.
“Lay-to!” says I. “Lay-to, under a coat! Lay-to, in a boat like this, with the wind getting up a gale! A seaman like you talk in that way! Who have I got along here with me? Sailors who know their craft, or a pack of ’longshore lubbers, who ought to be turned adrift in a ferry-boat on a pond?” My heart was heavy enough, God knows, but I spoke out as loud as I could, in that light way, to try and shame the men back to their proper senses. I succeeded at least in restoring silence; and that was something in such a condition as ours.