The Two Shipmates

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Jessie assured him that he was welcome.

“I have news for you. Wonderful news, which you little expected to hear,” he continued.

“Oh, tell me! What is it?” cried Jessie, gasping for breath, and her heart beating violently.

“I had always heard say, what you thought also, that your father, Captain Flamank, perished at sea; now I’ve got to tell you that he didn’t, for I’ve seen him, and he is alive and well, and he sent me on to tell you that he would be with you soon.”

“My father alive!” ejaculated Jessie. Is she to be blamed if she felt disappointed at hearing his name instead of Ralph’s as she had expected? Her affection for her father, long supposed dead, however, quickly revived, and she became eager to welcome him home.

Peter told her that the captain of the ship to which he himself belonged having died at the Cape of Good Hope, it became necessary for the consignees to find another. That one had been selected who, with other officers, had just arrived after having been prisoners to the French for several years in a remote island in the Indian Ocean. The crews of the captured vessels had been sent away and exchanged; but the officers had been detained till the termination of the war, for fear that they might give information to the English of the position of the island, the favourite rendezvous of French privateers.

“You may suppose how surprised I was to hear that our new captain’s name was Flamank,” continued Peter. “I at once told him that I knew you, and how kind you had been to me, and soon found that he was your father. He seemed never tired of asking me questions about you, and so of course I gave him a full account of all that I thought would interest him. He, in return, told me a great deal about himself. His ship had not been wrecked, as was supposed, but had been captured by a French privateer, on board which he had been taken. She was shortly afterwards wrecked on an island in the Indian Ocean, when the Frenchmen attempted to reach the shore in their boats, leaving the prisoners on board. The boats were swamped, and all in them perished. Notwithstanding this, most of the prisoners having built a raft, pushed off on it and shared their fate. Captain Flamank and two others, seeing signs of the gale abating, refused to join them, and the next day landed safely in a sheltered cove, in the neighbourhood of which they took up their abode, having brought on shore a large store of provisions and everything they required from the wreck before she went to pieces. His two companions, one of whom was wounded, died, and he was left alone for several years till taken off by another French privateer. From what the captain said I have an idea that he thinks of going back there if he has an opportunity, as he had hidden away no small amount of treasure, taken out of the wreck, which he didn’t tell the French privateer’s-men of, for more reasons than one. First, he couldn’t speak their lingo; secondly, as bad weather was coming on, they were in a hurry to be off; and as it was property which their countrymen had taken from English vessels, he had no fancy to let them get it. But I’ve still another strange thing to tell you. Soon after the captain was taken aboard the privateer, she was chased by an English frigate during a heavy gale. The privateer narrowly escaped shipwreck on the island they had left; and it was the opinion of the Frenchmen, and the captain thinks they were right, that the frigate was cast away. There can be no doubt that she was the Falcon, and he thinks that some, if not all the crew, may have escaped, and be still living on the island.”

Jessie was making many eager inquiries on the subject, when Peter, looking at his watch, jumped up, and telling her that she would soon see the captain, hurried away. Before an hour was over she was clasped in her father’s arms. He had much to hear from her of her numerous trials and difficulties, and she in return longed to learn more about his adventures and the supposed wreck of the Falcon than Peter had told her. He confirmed in all points the account she had heard.

“It has always been supposed, I find, that my ship, the Dolphin, was driven on shore during a hurricane in the Indian Ocean, and that all on board had perished,” continued Captain Flamank. “The report was brought home as you know by another English ship, the Chieftain, which had been in company with us. She herself narrowly escaped the outer end of a reef, and was driven far away to the southward, and her master having observed our perilous position, and not again falling in with us, naturally concluded that we had been lost. This I have only lately learned. We were truly in great danger, but happily, being carried through an opening in the reef, were able to anchor in safety under the lee of the land.

“We congratulated ourselves on our escape. Scarcely, however, had we made sail after the gale was over, than we saw standing out of a bay, a short distance off, which a lofty headland had concealed from us, a large ship which we soon knew to be a French privateer. In vain we did our utmost to escape, while we fired our stern guns in the hopes of crippling her. She soon ranged up alongside, when, finding that further resistance would be useless, with a sad heart I hauled down my flag. I was at once transferred to the privateer with several of my men, and a prize-crew was put on board the Dolphin, which sailed to the northward. As I never heard of her again, I suspect that she went down in a hurricane before she reached her destination. The privateer cruised for some time in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, and after taking another prize with a large amount of specie, which was of course removed on board her, she one night was wrecked on a small rocky island, of the existence of which no one appeared to be aware. I will not describe the horrors which ensued. All discipline was lost, each man, regardless of the rest, thinking only how he could secure his own safety.”