Peter the Whaler

by William Henry Giles Kingston

As she drew near, she was seen to contain eight men. Four were pulling, one sat in the bows, and the other three in the stern-sheets. If they were armed, it could not be discovered. When they got within hail, the captain asked them what they wanted.

They pointed to their mouths, and one answered in Spanish, “Aqua, aqua, por amor de Dios.”

“They want water, sir, they say,” observed the first mate, who prided himself on his knowledge of Spanish.

“That’s the reason, then, that they were in such a hurry to speak to us,” said the captain. “But still, does it not strike you as odd that a vessel should be in want of water in these seas?”

“Her water-butts might have leaked out; and some of these Spanish gentry, sir, are very careless about taking enough water to sea,” replied the mate, who was biassed by the pleasure he anticipated of being able to sport his Spanish.

“Get a water-cask up on deck, and we’ll have it ready to give these fellows, whatever they may be,” said our humane captain. “Have some pannikins ready to serve it out to them. Thirst is a dreadful thing, and one would not keep a fellow-creature in that state a moment longer than one could help.”

I do not know what the second mate thought of the strangers, but I remember several of the crew saying that they did not like their looks; and I saw him place a cutlass close to the gun nearest the starboard gangway, while he kept eyeing them in no very affectionate manner. Notwithstanding the heat of the weather, the men in the stern-sheets wore cloaks. On observing this, Bill Tasker said he supposed it was to hide the shabby jackets they wore under them. The other men were dressed in blue shirts, and their sleeves rolled up to the shoulder, with the red sash usually worn by Spaniards round their waist, in which was stuck the deadly cuchillo, or cut-and-thrust knife, in a sheath, carried by most Lusitanian and Iberian seamen and their descendants of the New World.

They pulled up at once alongside, and before any one attempted to stop them they had hooked on, the man in the bows climbing up on deck, followed by his companions in cloaks, and two of the seamen. The other two remained in the boat, pointing at their mouths, as a sign that they wanted water.

Seamen, from the sufferings and dangers to which they are exposed, are proverbially kind to those in distress. Our men, therefore, seemed to vie with each other who should first hold the pannikins of water to the mouths of the strangers, while a tub, with the fluid, was also lowered into the boat alongside. They eagerly rushed at the water, and drank up all that was offered them; but I could not help remarking that they did not look like men suffering from thirst. However, a most extraordinary effect was produced on two of them, for they fell down on the deck, and rolled about as if in intense agony. This drew the attention of all hands on them; and as we had no surgeon on board, the captain began to ransack his medical knowledge to find remedies for them.

While he was turning over the pages of his medical guide to find some similar case of illness and its remedy described, the schooner was edging down towards us. As she approached, I observed only a few men on board; and they, as the people in the boat had done, were pointing at their mouths, as if they were suffering from want of water. The boat was on the lee side.