“We might have held out till to-morrow morning, when some vessel might have seen us and picked us up.”
Curiously enough, he did not think much about himself. Though he was thankful to have been saved, he guessed truly that the greater number of his shipmates, and the unfortunate prisoners on board, must have been lost; yet he regretted Jack and Tom more than all the rest.
The flames from the burning ship cast a bright glare far and wide over the ocean, tinging the foam-topped seas.
Bill kept gazing towards the ship. He could make out the Frenchman at some distance off, and fancied that he saw boats pulling across the tossing waters.
On the other side he could distinguish another vessel, which was also, he hoped, sending her boats to the relief of the sufferers.
The whole ship, however, appeared so completely enveloped in fire, the flames bursting out from all the ports and rising through every hatchway, that he could not suppose it possible any had escaped.
He found it a hard matter to cling on to the piece of wreck, for the seas were constantly washing over him. Happily it was weighted below, so that it remained tolerably steady. Had it rolled over and over he must inevitably have lost his hold and been drowned.
Though he had had very little of what is called enjoyment in life, and his prospects, as far as he could see, were none of the brightest, he still had no wish to die, and the instinct of self-preservation made him cling to the wreck with might and main.
The tide, which was setting towards the shore, had got hold of his raft, which was also driven by the wind in the same direction, and he found himself drifting gradually away from the burning ship, and his chance of being picked up by one of the boats diminishing.
He remembered that land had been in sight some time before the action, but how far the ship had been from it when she caught fire he could not tell, and when he turned his eyes to the southward he could see nothing of it.