Presently a ladder was let down. None of the men seemed inclined to descend, evidently having some doubts as to my character, till the last speaker, calling the others cowards, came down. Instead of at first reviving me, the effect of the fresh air was to make me faint away. When I recovered I found myself lying on the deck, surrounded by a number of strange faces. A seaman—the one who, I suppose, had brought me up—was supporting me and applying a wet cloth to my head and shoulders, while another, kneeling down, was examining my countenance.
“Why, youngster, how did you come aboard here? Where have you been ever since we sailed from the Mersey?” he asked.
Too weak to answer, I could only stretch out my hand and then point to my lips, to show that I wanted food and water.
“If you’ve been down in the hold all these weeks, no wonder that you want something to eat,” he remarked.
Still he didn’t move, or propose to obtain any refreshment for me. As my lack-lustre eyes looked up at him, I recognised Gregory Growles, the old seaman to whom I had at first spoken with my cutter under my arm. No wonder that he didn’t recollect me in my present forlorn and dirt-begrimed condition. At last the seaman against whom I leant told one of his messmates to get me some water. With indifference, if not unwillingness, the man did as requested, and going to the water-butt on deck brought me a mugful, which I greedily drank.
“By the feel of his ribs he wants something more substantial than water,” observed my friend. “We must get the poor young chap into a berth, and feed him up, or he’ll be slipping his cable. There doesn’t seem to be much life in him now.”
“That will be seen.”
“What business had he to stow himself away, and make us all fancy that a ghost was haunting the ship?” cried Growles, in a surly way. “We shall hear what the captain has to say to him. To my notion, as he’s made his bed, so he’ll have to lie on it.”
“Come, come, mate, it would be hard lines for the poor young chap if he were left to die, without any of us trying to bring him through. I, for one, can’t stand by doing nothing, so just one of you lend a hand here, and we’ll put him into my berth, and get the cook to make some broth for him,” said the kind-hearted seaman.
While he was speaking, a person, who was evidently one of the officers, came forward and expressed his surprise at seeing me, and inquired why he hadn’t been informed of my having been discovered?