BY CHARLES J. PETERSON, AUTHOR OF "CRUISING IN THE LAST WAR," ETC., ETC.

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

"A man overboard!"

I heard the cry distinctly as the dark waters whirled me astern.

"Who?—where?"

"Heave over a coop!"

"Can you see him?"

"Clear away the quarter-boat!"

These were the cries that followed each other in rapid succession, accompanied with the hurried tread of feet, which rose even over the sounds of the whistling hurricane and of the roaring water in which I was immersed.

We had been out from Marseilles about three days, and were now well up with the Straits. A gale which had begun just after dawn had increased with such violence that before the afternoon set in we were lying-to under a storm stay-sail. Noticing that the heel of the boom was chafing loose, I had gone aloft to repair it, when a sudden lurch tore the spar from its fastenings, and flung me into the air like a ball shot from a twenty-four.

At first I sunk plumb, as if tied to a shot; but in a few seconds began to ascend. When I reached the surface, however, it was to find myself whirling from the vessel's side, with a confused noise of the howling tempest and the bubbling waters in my ears: yet over all rose the shouts of my messmates.

I was so blinded by the water that I could not immediately see. I spun around and around as in a whirlpool, for I had been caught in the eddies under the stern. I looked to windward, too, for the ship; forgetting that a heavy vessel would make more leeway than my light person. Just as I sunk in the trough of the sea, however, I caught sight of the tall spars pitching a short distance to leeward; and when I rose on the next wave I took care to have my eyes fixed in that direction. I could now behold the men in the rigging on the look-out, and hear again distinctly their eager and excited cries. They were all gazing to leeward, and consequently could not see me.

"Whereaway is he?"

"I can't see him—can you?"

"There—he has just sunk in the trough—no! it was not he."

"Hillo!"

"Hil-hil-loa!"

While these cries were following each other, the skipper himself came on deck, and springing on the tafferel cast a rapid glance around the horizon. I thought his eye had lighted on me, for, unlike the rest, he turned to windward; but, after a hasty glance in the right direction, he, too, looked off to leeward. How my heart sunk within me! Was I to perish, and within hearing too, in consequence of this mistake of my messmates? I raised my voice and shouted. I could still hear the answers.

"Ahoy!—aho-o-y!"

"There—that was his voice certainly—can't you see him yet?"

"Ahoy!—ahoy!—aho-o-y!" I repeated, straining my lungs to the utmost.

"Hillo!" replied the stentorian voice of the skipper, the words struggling faintly against the wind.

The ship was rapidly drifting down to leeward, and I knew that if not soon discovered I was lost, so I shouted again.

"Aho-o-y!—A-hoy!—A-hoy!—Aho-o-y!"

The last word was frantically prolonged, and I watched its effect for a full minute with intense anxiety. It was evident from the manner in which my comrades on board glanced anew around the horizon, as also from the shouts which they uttered in reply, that my cry had reached them. I could not indeed hear their hail, but saw their hands to their mouths as when persons shout loudly. Alas! the same fatal error of still looking in the wrong direction prevailed among them: not an eye was turned to windward. My heart died within me.

"Oh, God!" I cried, "they do not hear me, and I am lost. My mother—my poor, poor mother."

I forgot to mention that, on my falling overboard, the cook, who had been cleaning knives in the galley, had mechanically flung the board he was using into the sea. Luckily it floated near me, and catching it, I placed it, end up, under my chin, and thus supported my head above the water without difficulty. But for this, perhaps, I should have been wearied out already by the surges which would have broke over me continually, but which I now generally rode. I also had on my oilskin cap and coat: an equally fortunate circumstance.

After giving way, therefore, for a few minutes to despondency, as I saw the ship drifting off, I rallied myself, and, reflecting that hope never dies while there is life, began to consider my situation more calmly. The comparative buoyancy of my dress, added to the board I had so fortunately obtained, would enable me to keep afloat for an hour, or perhaps for even a longer period, and in that time what chances might not turn up! I knew the Gulf was crowded with vessels. I had observed a French frigate, lying-to, to windward, just before I fell overboard. The direction in which I was drifting would carry me near her, when I might be more fortunate in attracting attention. I cheered my heart with this reflection, and began to look out for the man-of-war.

My first object, in this new frame of mind, was to get rid of my boots, which were by this time full of water, and began sensibly to drag me down. With great difficulty I succeeded in pulling them off; for I had to retain hold of my board with one hand while I worked at the boot with the other. At last I was rid of those dangerous encumbrances, and, floating more lightly, had a better opportunity to look around. Of course my vision of distant objects was cut off every moment by my being carried down into the trough of the sea. No one, who has not been in a similar situation, can appreciate the awfulness with which I gazed on the dark, glistening sides of the immense billows, as I saw myself sinking away from them, as if to the very bottom of the ocean. With what horrid mockery the glassy waters seemed to rise mountain high all around me. Suddenly, when I was at the lowest, I would begin to ascend, as if by magic, from that gloomy gulf, my velocity increasing every instant, until at last I would shoot upward above the crest of the wave, like an arrow propelled from the abyss. A toss of the head, to shake off the water, a long drawn breath, to recover myself, a hasty glance around, and then I was whirled downward again, half smothered in the wild abyss.

I had been overboard half an hour before I caught sight of the French frigate. When at last I beheld her, I could scarcely restrain a cry of joy. She was drifting rapidly toward me, and would pass within hail. How beautiful she looked! Her symmetrical hull, that floated buoyantly as some wild-fowl: her tall spars, unrelieved by a single bit of canvas, except the close-reefed maintop-sail under which she was lying-to: these, penciled against the horizon, formed together a picture of grace and beauty unsurpassed. Now she would pitch head-foremost into the sea; now slowly rise dripping from the deluge. Here and there a look-out was visible dotting her rigging. As she swung, pendulum-like, the wild and whirling clouds that rapidly traversed the distant sky seemed one moment to stand still, and then to speed past her with accelerated velocity. In the midst of peril as I was I still felt all the charm of this picture.

Suddenly I reflected—what if I should miss the frigate? There were other vessels in sight, but none in my track, for by this time I could calculate, with some approach to accuracy, the direction of my drift. Again the thought of my mother came up to me. I was her only son—her almost sole hope—the comfort and darling of her old age. Perhaps even now she was thinking of me. I seemed to see her silver hair, and hear her mild voice once more. Then the vision of that gray head bowed in grief arose. I beheld her in the weeds of deep mourning, bent in body and prostrated in mind. They had told her that her child had been lost overboard months ago, and was now a thousand fathom in the sea. I groaned audibly. God knows, even in that awful hour, it was less of myself than of my mother I thought!

I was now rapidly approaching the frigate.

"Hillo!—hil-lo!" I cried, waving my arm above my head, as I rose on the crest of a wave.

I had but an instant to watch the effect of my cry, before I was submerged again. But there was time enough to assure me that I had not been heard.

I noticed, with terrible misgivings, that my voice was much weaker than it had been half an hour before. Was I so soon becoming exhausted? At this rate, an hour more would probably extinguish life.

This idea filled me with alarm, and as I gained the crest of the next billow, I made a desperate exertion to shout both louder and quicker.

"Hillo!—hillo!—hillo-o-o!" I frantically cried.

I was still prolonging the sound when the comb of a wave went over me, and half blinded as well as smothered, I was tumbled headlong down into the trough of the sea, which I reached more dead than alive. I was still so exhausted when I rose on the next billow that I could not speak.

With agony inexpressible I now saw myself nearly abreast of the frigate. Another descent, another mad whirl upward, and I found her shooting from me. I was now almost delirious with despair,

"Hillo!—ahoy!" I cried. "Oh! for the love of God, hear me!"

I fancied I saw a look-out turn toward me. I knew he must have heard me. If I could have remained on the top of that surge an instant longer his eye would have fallen on me; but the insatiate gulf demanded me, and seized in the embraces of the pitiless waters, I was hurried downward to darkness and death.

When I next rose to the light of day, the man-of-war was fast receding. I was so utterly drenched, so breathless from being nearly smothered, that I could not raise my voice above that of a child, and hence failed to attract the attention of the look-out whom I still saw gazing in search of me. May Heaven grant that none who read these words may ever experience feelings similar to mine at that moment! In another instant I had recovered my voice, but the frigate was now out of hearing.

Suddenly, just as I was giving way to despair, I saw in the distance a large ship driving before the gale, under a reefed maintop-sail and storm stay-sail. She was heading directly toward me. This afforded a new gleam of hope. If I could but arrest her attention, I thought I should be rescued. I forgot that it would be first necessary to throw her into the wind, and that the risk of her broaching-to in this manoeuvre would probably prevent her paying any attention to my cries.

On she came, racing like some mad courser, yet riding the gigantic billows buoyantly as a bird. Now half enveloped in the driving foam—now rolling her vast yard-arms almost to the water—now showing her keel as far back as the dripping fore-chains, she presented a spectacle of the most terrible sublimity. The scene around, too, added to the awful majesty of the picture. Just as she rose on a colossal wave, in the trough of which I was buried an immense distance beneath her, a flash of lightning blazed across her track, while, at the same instant, the clouds rolled away behind her, as if lifted like a curtain, and the sun burst forth in all his glory. Never shall I forget the sight! The after part of the gallant ship was buried in the crest of the wave, which, beating over her quarter, flew into the maintop itself. Her fore part had outrun the billow, and hung for a second suspended over the abyss. Then, like a falcon stooping from its height, she swooped down into the gulf, the wild waters roaring after her, like wolves in pursuit of their prey.

She was somewhat to leeward of me, but nevertheless I shouted with all my might, again and again.

It was in vain. Her crew clinging to the rigging, were all engaged each in his own preservation, and no more noticed the half-buried figure calling to them, than they observed the sea-bird that, like an avant courier, swept the billow before them. I shouted, I shrieked, I waved my arm frantically over my head. But all to no purpose. I heard the fierce bubbling of the waters as the mighty ship tore through them close at hand; I caught a glimpse of the pale and terrified faces of her crew, gleaming out in the angry light of the setting sun: and then the vision passed, a Titanic wave upheaved between us, and I was alone.

Alone on the illimitable ocean! Alone while night was drawing on! Alone with no chance of escape remaining! Far, far to leeward, just visible occasionally over the distant surges, I saw my own vessel; but, except this, the horizon was now without a speck.

I burst into tears. The tension of my nerves had been unnatural; they now gave way: and, as I saw nothing but death before me, I wept like a child. Yet still it was the thought of my mother that affected me, not any consideration of self. My whole past life rushed in review before me. I saw myself at my mother's knee looking and wondering as she taught me to pray. I was a boy going to school, now chasing a butterfly, now watching the angler from the village bridge, but ever loitering on my way. I saw my little sister die, and after her, one by one, in that season of terrible epidemic, my four brothers. I followed my father to the grave, the last victim of that pestilence: I wept with my surviving parent: I promised always to stay by her: I was her all in all. And then, with the flight of years, came other pictures. I was older and more adventurous, but, I fear, not wiser nor better. A strange longing for the sea had seized me. I had secretly joined a ship sailing to the Mediterranean, and was now on my return. But, alas! I was never to see that happy home again. The avenging bolt of God had overtaken me. No mother would ever weep above my ashes, no kind hand would deck the sod with flowers. My doom was to be tossed to and fro, midway down the depths of ocean, until the trumpet of the arch-angel should sound.

The night began to close in. Darker and darker the shades of evening fell around the waste of waters, and the wind, as it went by, seemed moaning my requiem. Occasionally the lightning threw a ghastly radiance across the water. I was cold, weary, and half stupefied. My senses began to desert me. No longer able to buffet against fate as I had done, I took in each moment larger draughts of the briny element. In fact I was drowning. Things actual and things visionary—the present and the past—began to commingle in my brain in a wild phantasmagoria. Faces of childhood, the sweet faces of my dead brothers and sisters, looked at me from the sky above; while hideous ones, the countenances seen in fever-dreams, grinned out from the spray around. Confused noises, too, were in my ears. There was music as if from celestial spheres; then notes as if demons laughed in the gale. Gradually all things, seen or heard, became more and more indistinct; a dead blank swum before me, leaving only the sensation of blackness: and then followed utter forgetfulness, the stupor of the dead—or rather that trance between life and death, when the body is exhausted but the vital spark not yet fled—that one dread pause between this world and the next.

I have no recollection of any thing further, until I was partially roused from my insensibility by a hand being laid on me. The next instant I was dragged violently through the water, and thrown on my chest across some sharp substance, which I concluded was the gunwale of a boat. I fell with such force as to eject from me, as from a force-pump, the water I had swallowed. The excessive pain roused me to more complete consciousness. I languidly opened my eyes. I thought I recognized familiar faces: the doubt was settled immediately by a well known voice.

"Easy there, Jack—poor fellow! he is almost gone—now, my hearties!"

The words were spoken in the kind tone of the mate. I knew now that I had been picked up by our ship's boat. She was lying head-on to the waves, to prevent her being swamped while she took me up. Obeying the directions of the mate, the men with a second effort lifted me completely out of the water, and laid me in the stern-sheets of the boat.

"How do you feel?" asked the mate. "God help us, we were looking for you in the wrong direction, till, all at once, I remembered you ought to be to windward, and so at last made you out, a mere speck on the horizon. We had a hard pull to reach you too! At first I thought we should be swamped. But here you are safe. And now, lads, give way lustily."

The crew, at these words, put double strength into their oars, and away we sped toward the ship. What a sensation of comfort and security came over me as I felt the planks under me, and heard the waters, which, cheated of their prey, followed roaring in our wake.

I looked up toward the mate, who, steering with one hand, was covering me with his jacket with the other. He was doing it, too, as tenderly as a mother wraps her babe. Oh! how full my heart was. I tried to raise myself on my elbow and speak.

"Nay! shipmate," he said, placing his hand on my shoulder gently, as if to press me down, "not a word. You need rest: you were three hours in the water."

In truth, this little exertion had made me dizzy. I heard his words as in a dream, and sunk back, while all things seemed to whirl around me. I closed my eyes, and presently, in a whisper, the mate said—

"He sleeps. I don't think he could have stood it five minutes longer. Who would have told his mother?"

From this time until I woke in my berth, I lay in a state of profound insensibility. They have since told me that on reaching the ship they thought me gone; but that by chafing my limbs, and employing stringent restoratives they recovered me. I soon after sunk into a refreshing sleep, and when I woke in the morning was perfectly well, though weak.

It was quite dark, it appears, when we reached the ship, so that if my discovery had come a few minutes later, it is exceedingly doubtful whether or not I could have been saved.

Years have passed since then, and I have rehearsed my deliverance a hundred times, yet I always shudder to recall those terrible hours when Overboard in the Gulf.