Ralph Granger's Fortunes

by William Perry Brown

When he rubbed his eyes at dawn he lay there dreading to rise. The loneliness of the sea renewed its terrors at once, and he feared to look upon a scene of which he was the sole living element.

"I'm getting to be a regular baby," he said aloud. "I wonder what grandfather would say could he see me now. I am at least away from that old feud, if I never was before."

This allusion led him into a reverie upon the strangeness of the fate that had led him half across the world in order to free himself from a senseless quarrel, and to be pursued by it to an extent that had left him free from its influence only when he was facing death in his present forlorn condition.

He had been sent to Shard, whom he should have avoided as a relative of the Vaughn faction. Shard had sent him to Gary, while Gary, five thousand miles away, was wreaking upon the boy all the hatred inspired by the haters of his family far back in the Southern mountains.

At last he raised his head and peered out upon the watery waste. As his gaze swept from one side to the other an exclamation of amazement dropped from his lips and he sprang to his feet.

Scarcely a quarter of a mile away was the Wanderer, with her sails all spread and flapping idly from side to side as she rolled gently upon the dead swell of the sea. The wind had died away and the slaver lay between the yawl and the eastern dawn, a dim yet recognizable bulk. Her dark, graceful proportions were not to be mistaken.

"This beats the nation!" was Ralph's next ejaculation. "This is what one might call pure luck. Now if I only had a pair of oars."

Not having any, he tried his sail, but found the attempt useless, and he was compelled to sit there thrilling with impatience to be aboard once more. Finally, as he was about to rise and shout, he noticed something white being waved from one of the stern windows.

While he was puzzling his brain over the meaning of this, a line of black heads appeared above the bulwarks, and sundry black, naked forms ran up the rigging. At the same time a chorus of barbaric yells rang out, that chilled the boy's blood, even at that distance.

"I wonder if the blacks have got possession of the ship at last," and with the thought his heart sank as he realized the certain death to all in case such a thing had taken place. "If this be so, they have undoubtedly killed every white aboard."