Picked up at Sea.

by J.C. Hutcheson.

STORY ONE, CHAPTER ONE.

THE GOLD-MINERS OF MINTURNE CREEK.

THE "SUSAN JANE."

"Sail-ho on the weather-bow!"

"What do you make it?"

"Looks like a ship's mast, with the yard attached, and a man a-holding on to it and hailing us for help--leastways, that's what it seems to me!"

"Jerusalem! On the weather-bow, you say? Can we forereach him on this tack?"

"I reckon we can jist about do it, boss, if you put the helm up a bit kinder nearer the wind," drawled out the lookout from his post of observation in the main-top, where he had stopped a moment on catching sight of the object floating in the water ahead of the vessel, as he was coming down from aloft after restowing the bunt of the main-topgallantsail that had blown loose from its lashings.

The _Susan Jane_ of and for Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts, with a cargo from London, had been caught at the outset of her pa.s.sage across the Atlantic by what her American skipper termed "a pretty considerable gale of wind;" and she now lay tossing about amid the broken waves of the boisterous Bay of Biscay, on the morning after the tempest, the full force of which she had fortunately escaped, trying to make some headway under her jib, close-reefed topsails, and storm staysails, with a bit of her mainsail set to steady her, half brailed up--although the task was difficult, with a nasty chopping cross-sea and an adverse wind.

The vessel had recently pa.s.sed a lot of wreckage, that betokened they were not far from the spot where some ship, less lucky than themselves, had been overwhelmed by the treacherous waters of the ill-fated bay; and the news that a waif was now in sight, supporting a stray survivor, affected all hearts on board, and roused their sympathies at once.

The captain of the New England barque had already adjusted the telescope, that he carried in true sailor fashion tucked under his left arm, to his "weather-eye," and was looking eagerly in the direction pointed out by the seaman, before he received the answer from aloft to his second hail. But he could not as yet see what the lookout had discovered, from the fact of the waves being still high and his place of outlook from the deck lower than the other's.

"Are you certain, Tom, you see some one?" he called out again, after a moment's pause, during which he narrowly scanned the uneven surface of the sea.

"Yes, sure," was the confident reply. "As sartain as there's snakes in Virginny!"

"Still in the same direction?"

"Ay, ay; a point or two to windward."

"Ha! I see him at last!" exclaimed the skipper, clambering up from the deck, and supporting himself by holding on to the mizzen-rigging as he stood on the taffrail and peered forward along the ship's side, to where he could now notice the floating object ahead, almost in the wind's-eye.

"Luff, you beggar, luff!" he added, to the steersman, who, with both hands on the wheel, was exerting all his strength to keep the vessel's head up.

"She can't do it, sir," replied the sailor, hoa.r.s.ely. "It's all I can manage to prevent her falling off now."

"She must do it!" was the captain's answer. "Watch, ahoy! Brace round those topsail-yards a bit more! Cheerily, men, with a will!"

"Yo-ho-heave-oh-e! Yo-ho-heave!" rang out the chorussed cry of the crew pulling together at the braces, until the topsails lay like boards almost fore and aft the ship. And yet her head could not be induced to veer a fraction towards the desired point, but rather fell off if anything.

"Guess we shall have to put more sail on her," said Seth Allport, mate of the _Susan Jane_, singing out from amidship, where he was on duty.

"Guess so, Cap'en, if you want to fetch him."

"It's risky work, Seth," rejoined the skipper, "for she's now got as much on her as she can carry. But I s'pose it must be done if we're to pick up that poor fellow. Here, boys," he cried out suddenly to the crew, "we must shake a reef out of the mainsail. Look smart, will ye!"

The effect of this sail was soon apparent. No sooner had the folds of canvas expanded to the wind than the _Susan Jane_ heeled over with a lurch as if she were going to capsize, bringing her bow so much round that her jib shivered, causing several ominous creaks and cracks aloft from the quivering topmasts.

"She'll do it now, sir," said the mate, who had come aft, and with another of the crew lent a hand to a.s.sist the steersman, who found the wheel too much for him now unaided, with the additional sail there was on the ship.

"Steady! How's the poor chap bearing now?" asked the skipper, hailing the lookout once more, as he lost sight of the wreckage by the vessel's change of position and the lifting of the bow so much out of the water forward as she rose on the sea.

"Right ahead. Just a trifle to leeward, boss."

"How far off?"

"A couple of cables' lengths, I guess, Cap'en. Better send a hand forrud in the chains to sling him a rope, or we'll pa.s.s him by in a minnit."

"Right you are," was the reply of the good-hearted skipper, as he rushed along to the forecastle himself with a coil over his arm, that he might fling it to the man in the water as soon as he floated within reach.

It was a task that had to be deftly performed, for the ship was forging through the sea, and plunging her bowsprit under water as she rose and fell in her progress, one minute describing a half-circle through the air with her forefoot as she yawed to the heavy rolling waves, the next diving deep down into the billows and tossing up tons of water over her forecastle, where the skipper stood, watching his opportunity, as the broken spars, on which he could now plainly see that the figure of a man was lashed, swept nearer and nearer on the crest of a wave that bore them triumphantly on high above the storm-wrack and foam.

While the wreckage was yet out of reach he could notice, too, that the figure was perfectly motionless and still.

What the topman had taken to be an outstretched hand, waving a handkerchief or some fluttering object, was only the ragged end of a piece of the sail that was still attached to the yard and a part of the topmast of some vessel, which had been torn away by the violence of the gale and cast adrift, with the unfortunate seaman who was clinging to it.

"Poor chap!" thought the American captain aloud, "I'm afraid there's not much life left in him now; but if there is any, I reckon we'll save him." And, as he uttered the words, he dexterously threw one end of the coil of rope, which he had already formed into a running bowline knot, over the spars as they were swept past the side of the _Susan Jane_, while he fastened the other end fast in-board, slackening out the line gradually, so as not to bring it up too tight all at once and so jerk the man off the frail raft.

"Easy there,"--he called out to the men aft. "Let her head off a bit now, and brail up that mainsail again. Easy! Belay!"

"Thank G.o.d, we've got him!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. Mr Rawlings, the solitary pa.s.senger on board the _Susan Jane_.

By this time, the waif from the wreck was towing safely alongside the _Susan Jane_, in the comparatively smooth water of the ship's lee; and in a few seconds the rough seamen who went to their captain's a.s.sistance had detached the seemingly lifeless form of the survivor from the spars to which he had been securely lashed, and lifted him, with the gentleness and tender care almost of women, on board the vessel that had come so opportunely in his way.

"Slacken off those lee braces a bit, and haul in these to the weather-side!" said the captain, as soon as he had got back to his proper place on the p.o.o.p again. "I think the wind is coming round more aft, and we can lay her on her course. Keep her steady. So!"--he added, to the man at the wheel. "But easy her off now and then, if she labours."

And then he went below to the cabin, down to which the rescued sailor had been carried, and where the mate, Mr Rawlings, and the negro steward, were trying to bring him back to life by rolling him in blankets before the stove.

STORY ONE, CHAPTER TWO.

RESCUED.

"Waal, how's the man getting on now?" asked the skipper as he entered the cuddy.

"Man?" said Mr Rawlings, looking up on the captain's entrance. "It isn't a man at all. Only a lad of sixteen summers at best."

"Poor chap!" said the other sympathisingly. "Man or boy, I guess he's had a pretty rough time of it out thaar!"

"Just so," answered the pa.s.senger. "And it's a wonder he's still alive."

"Is he? I was afraid he was gone!" said the captain.

"No, sah. Um berry much alibe, sah, yes sah," said the steward, who, having seen many half-drowned persons before, had known how to treat the present patient properly. "See, sah, him chest rise and fall now, sah.