“The corvette was bound round the Horn, so back again into the Pacific I went. We touched at many places in Chili and Peru, and then stood to the west to visit some of the many islands in those seas. I had been about a year on board when one day an object was seen from the mast-head, which was made out to be a boat.
“There was one man sitting up in her, but three others lay dead under the thwarts. The man was brought on board more dead than alive, and had it not been for the watchful care of our surgeon he could not have long survived. At first he was nothing but skin and bone, with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, but when he got some flesh on him I recognised him as one of my shipmates who had deserted us on the Falkland Islands. He had not, it seemed, discovered any of us, and of course in two years I was so grown that he did not know me. So one day, sitting by him, I asked him how it was he came into the plight in which we found him. He told me many circumstances of which I was cognisant, and how the ship was wrecked on the Falklands, and how part of the people had gone off into the interior, and deserted those who wisely remained on the sea-shore. ‘Never mind, they must have got their deserts, and perished,’ he added; and then he told me a ship appearing the day after we left, they had all gone on board. They soon found that the crew had been guilty of some foul deed; the captain and mate had been killed, with some others, and the rest had determined to turn pirates. My shipmate was asked if he would do so. They swore if he did not that he must die. To save his life, he with the rest consented to join them. I will not repeat the account he gave of all the crimes which he and his companions had committed. He said that he had protested against them, and excused himself. From bad they went on to worse, and frequently quarrelling, murdered each other. The end was that this ship was cast away on a reef, one boat only escaping, and of the people in her, after she had been nearly a month drifting over the ocean, he alone survived. We who had been left alone on the Falklands had reason to be thankful that we had not gone off in the pirate ship. Had we done so, who among us could have said that we should have escaped the terrible fate which overtook our shipmates? From the time I learned the Lord’s Prayer, there is no part I have repeated more earnestly than ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ My poor shipmate never completely recovered from the hardships to which he had been exposed; his mind, too, was always haunted with the dreadful scenes he had witnessed, and he often told me that he never could show his face in England, lest he should be recognised by those he had wronged. He died the day before we made the coast of England. The ship was paid off, but I found the naval service so much to my taste, and there was so little on shore to attract me, that I the next day joined another fitting out for the Indian station. After this, I visited in one ship or another most parts of the world. But I think, Doctor Morgan, you and your lady and the young gentlefolks will be getting tired, so I’ll put off an account of my adventures till another evening. One thing I must say now, though. I looked upon it as a blessed day on which I joined the ‘Rover,’ where I met Mister Morgan, and yet there was a day which I have reason to call still more blessed, when we were off the coast of Africa.”
“Well, well, Tom. Don’t talk of that now,” said Frank. “I just did what every Christian man should do. I put the truth before you, and you believed it. I did not put myself to any inconvenience even to serve Tom, while he risked his life to save mine. That was after the ‘Rover’ had come home and been paid off, and we belonged to the ‘Kestrel,’ and were sent out to the Pacific. I had an idea before we went there that we were to find at all times calm seas and sunshine. I soon discovered my mistake. We were caught in a terrific gale when in the neighbourhood of coral islands and reefs. I had gone aloft to shorten sail, when the ship gave an unexpected lurch, and I was sent clean overboard. I felt that I must be lost, for the ship was driving away from me, and darkness was not far off, when I saw that some one had thrown a grating into the sea, and immediately afterwards a man leaped in after it.
He was swimming towards me. There seemed a prospect of my being saved. Still, how the man who had thus nobly risked his life for my sake, and I could ever regain the ship, I could not tell. I struck out with all my strength to support myself, and prayed heartily. I soon recognised Tom Holman’s voice, cheering me up. He clutched me by the collar, and aided by him I gained the grating. Two or three spars had been thrown in after it, and, getting hold of them we formed a raft which supported us both. By the time we were seated on it the ship was far away, and it seemed impossible that in the dangerous neighbourhood in which I knew that we were, the captain would venture to return on the mere chance of finding us, should we indeed be alive. Our prospect outwardly was gloomy indeed, though we kept up hope. I was sorry when I thought that we should be lost; that Tom had, as I fancied, thrown away his life for my sake. However, we will not talk of that now. We were drifting, that was certain, and might drift on shore, or we might be driven against a reef, when we must be lost. It was now night, though there was light enough to distinguish the dark white-crested seas rising up around us, and the inky sky overhead. Still we knew that there was the Eye of Love looking down on us through that inky sky, and that though the rest of the world was shut out from us, we were not shut out from Him, without whose knowledge not a sparrow falls to the ground. I say this to you, dear father and mother, because I wish to show my brothers and sisters the effect of your teaching. I wished to live, but I was prepared to die. The water was warm, and as we had had supper just before I fell overboard we were not hungry, so that our physical sufferings were as yet not great. Hour after hour passed by; the raft drove on before the wind and sea. We supposed that it must be near dawn, for it seemed as if we had been two whole nights on the raft, when we both heard the sound of breakers. Our fate would soon thus be decided. As far as we were able, we gazed around when we reached the summit of a sea. There were the breakers; we could see the white foam flying up like a vast waterspout against the leaden sky. We were passing it though, not driving against it. A current was sweeping us on. The dawn broke. As the light increased our eyes fell on a grove of cocoa-nut trees, rising it seemed directly out of the water. The current was driving us near them. We sat up and eagerly watched the shore; we had of ourselves no means of forcing on the raft a point towards it, or in any degree faster than we were going. Had we been driven directly towards it, on the weather side, which, in our eagerness, we might have wished, we should probably have been dashed to pieces; but the current took us round to the lee side, and finally drifted us into a little bay where we safely got on shore. You already know how we lived luxuriously on cocoa-nuts and shell-fish, and about the clear fountain which rushed up out of the rock in the centre of our island, and how our ship came back after some weeks to water at that very fountain, and found us safe and well; and so I will bring my yarn to an end.”
“We cannot be too thankful that you were preserved, my dear boy, when we hear of the terrific dangers to which you and your brave friend were exposed,” exclaimed Dr Morgan. “I will not now speak of our debt to him, never properly to be repaid, but I would point out to you all, my children (what struck me as Frank was speaking), how like the way in which he and Tom were preserved, is that in which God deals with His people who put their trust in Him. We are in an ocean of troubles, with darkness around us. We dimly discern breakers rising up on one side, breakers ahead. We can do nothing to help ourselves, except pray on and trust in Him. We see at length a haven of safety before us. Our eagerness gets the better of our faith, but the current of His mercy drifts round and away from what is really a peril, and we are carried on into calm waters, and find shelter and rest from danger and trouble.”
Note 1. The author has a dear friend, a naval officer, who was, as is here described, the instrument of bringing some of his shipmates to a knowledge and acceptance of the truth; one especially, from being an infidel, became a faithful follower of Christ. His bones lie sepulchred under the eternal snows of the Arctic pole. How consolatory to believe, that amid the fearful sufferings that gallant band was called on to endure, he, with many others—it may be all—were supported by faith and hope to the last. We say all, for we cannot say what influence he and other Christian men may have exerted over their companions during the long, long years they passed in those Arctic regions ere they perished.