It was morning on the tenth day, dating from the foundering of the “Meteor.”

A barque of about six hundred tons, named the “Jessie Maxwell,” three weeks out from the port of Glasgow, having been becalmed all night, was standing south, with all sail set, and a gentle breeze on the beam.

It was the second officer’s watch on deck; he was sitting trimming his nails on the grating abaft the wheel, when the man who was steering, pointing to the horizon a few points before the port beam, asked him if he could see anything black there. The second officer not having very good sight, stared awhile and declared that he saw nothing; then, going forward, called to a man in the main-top to tell him if there was anything to be seen on the port beam. The man, shading his eyes, sang out that he could see a black object, but whether it was a boat or a piece of wreck he couldn’t say. Whereupon Mr. Anderson stepped to the companion-hatchway, took down the glass, and, having adjusted it to his sight, levelled it.

“By thunder!” he cried, keeping the glass to his eye, “it’s a boat—and there’s a mast, and a lug-sail—and something black at the mast head. But the de’il a soul can I make out aboard of her.”

He had another good look, and then, tucking the glass under his arm, went below.

In about three minutes’ time he returned, followed by a small stout man with a good-humoured face, and a grave, middle-aged gentleman with a long black beard.

“There, sir; there she is yonder!” said Mr. Anderson, incapable of seeing her with his naked eye, but concluding that she must still be where he had at first sighted her, and willing to obtain the credit of a good sight by a simple device.

“I see something black,” said the grave gentleman.

“Give us the glass!” exclaimed the short man, who was the skipper, and applied the telescope to his eye. “It is certainly a boat,” he observed, after a bit; “but I don’t see anybody moving in her. What’s that black thing at the mast-head? Is it a signal?”

He turned to the man at the wheel: “Starboard your helm. Mr. Anderson, trim the yards. Yonder may be some perishing human beings.”

The whisper soon went through the vessel that there was a boat in sight; the watch below turned out of their hammocks and came on deck; and soon the forecastle was lively with a crowd of hands gazing earnestly at the boat, which the alteration in the barque’s course now made distinguishable, and speculating as to the people who were on board of her.

“She looks to me like a ship’s quarter-boat,” said the skipper, with his eye to the glass. “The sheet of the sail is to windward, and she’s driving bodily to leeward. What in the name of conscience is the meaning of that black flag at the mast-head?”

They neared her rapidly, but were puzzled to discover no living thing stirring in her, for though it was perfectly true that the sail had not been dipped, she had all the appearance of being manned. The water was so calm that the barque was able to run almost alongside the boat. There was a rush to the vessel’s side, and then, as the boat was passed at a distance of forty or fifty feet, cries rose from the forecastle: “There’s a man in the stern-sheets!”

“Do you see him, sir, lying with his head under the aftermost thwart?”

“There’s two of them! See there—hard agin’ the mast!”

The boat dropped astern and revealed her interior to the people aft.

“My God! Two corpses in her!” cried the second mate.

“Man the starboard fore braces!” shouted the skipper.

The wheel flew round; the port fore-braces were let go, and the yards backed. The vessel’s way was stopped and a dozen hands came aft to lower away the port quarter boat. In jumped four men, the second mate at the tiller. “Lower away!” Down sank the boat, soused upon the water, the blocks were unhooked, out flew the oars.

In a few minutes the boat was alongside the coffin with the black flag at her mast-head. The men grabbed her gunwale, and stood up to look in.

God in Heaven! what a scene!

Holdsworth lay on his back, his legs bent double under him, his arms stretched out, and his ghastly face upturned directly under a thwart. Johnson lay in a heap near the mast, and they thought him at first a bundle of clothes, until they caught sight of his hair and the fingers of one hand. His face was hidden; but Holdsworth looked a gray and famished skeleton, with God’s signal of humanity eaten by suffering out of his face; his wrists, like white sticks, covered with sores, one foot naked, and the skin of that and of his face of the complexion and aspect of old parchment.

Crumbling fragments of salted biscuit were scattered on one of the seats. Aft was the open locker half-filled with water, coloured like pea-soup by the ship’s bread that was soaked and partially dissolved in it. In the bows were the empty kegs with the bungs out, and as the boat swayed to and fro to the movements of the small waves with which the wind had crisped the sea, these kegs rolled against each other with hollow sounds.

The dry, baked appearance of the boat, the fragments of biscuit, the empty kegs, and the skeleton men, formed a spectacle of horror and extreme misery, such as the wildest imagination could not realise without memory and experience to help it. Nor in this picture of pure ghastliness was the least ghastly item the black shawl, which fluttered its sable folds at the mast-head, and to the sailors typified, as no other image could, the character and quality of the horror they contemplated.

“Can they be dead?” gasped one of the sailors, whose white face showed him almost overcome.

“Mr. Anderson!” came a voice from the barque’s quarter-deck, “take the boat in tow and bring her alongside.”

They made the painter fast to their stern, lowered her sail, and started with their grim burden gliding after them. The voices of the men overhanging the vessel’s bulwarks rose in a low, deep hum, when the boat was near enough to enable them to see its contents again. The port gangway was unshipped, and some hands stood by with lines to hoist the bodies inboard.

“Do they live?” called out the skipper.

“They both seem dead, sir,” answered Anderson.

The boat was now brought right under the gangway, and the top of her mast being level with the bulwarks, submitted the shawl to the close scrutiny of the sailors. They examined it with awe and curiosity.

“It isn’t bunting,” said one.

“It looks like bunting too!” exclaimed another.

“See how it’s rigged up!” observed a third; “hitched on anyways.”

“If it ain’t a woman’s dress tore in two, I give it up,” said a fourth, “though there ain’t no woman in the boat as I can make out.”

By this time they were slinging Johnson under the arms and around the middle, ready to be hoisted over the gangway. Now that he was exposed, he made a more gaunt and sickening object than Holdsworth. He was an image of famine—of manhood killed by suffering—a picture such as the memory would retain when years had impaired its powers, and driven all other vivid impressions from it. The men fell back as the piteous object was reverently raised over the vessel’s side, and placed upon a sail near the main-hatchway. Then followed the form of Holdsworth.

The captain and the gentleman with the long beard approached the two bodies.

“Can you tell me if there’s any life in them, Mr. Sherman?” said the captain.

Mr. Sherman knelt and examined the two faces. The seamen pressed eagerly around to listen. The elements of the picturesque and the tragical entered so deeply into the scene as to make it extraordinarily impressive—the brown and rugged features of the sailors; the grave figure kneeling; the two bodies on their backs resembling skeletons poorly disguised by a rude imitation of human skin; the black shawl streaming alongside, symbolising a story of cruel, lingering, horrible death; above, the white sails of the vessel, and over all a beaming sky and a joyous sun! And add the mysteriousness of these famished and motionless visitants—their name, their country, their story unknown—their white lips sealed!

“What do you think?” asked the captain.

“This man,” answered Mr. Sherman, indicating Johnson, “is certainly dead; and in my opinion——”

But at that moment the feeblest of feeble tremors passed through Holdsworth.

“Quick!” cried Mr. Sherman, springing to his feet. “This man lives; they may both be alive! Have them taken below, Captain Duff! Quick, sir! every moment is precious!”

His excitement was contagious. The captain bellowed for the steward. Others seized upon the bodies and hurried aft with them. The murmur of many voices rose and swelled into a hubbub.

“Aft here to the davits, and hoist the boat up!” sang out the second mate; who, while this was doing, went below to take instructions as to the other boat, and returned with orders to get it inboard.

The curiosity of the men to handle and examine this boat was so great, that when the order was given for some hands to get into her, the whole ship’s company made a rush to the gangway. But this tumult was soon quelled by the help of a few Scotch curses. The boat was hauled round to the starboard side, and tackles rigged on to the fore and main yard-arms. Up came the boat cheerily, with her mast unshipped, and was lashed athwart-ships just before the main-hatchway. The vessel’s yards were then trimmed, and away she slipped through the water.

The hands could not be got away from the boat. Had she been the fossilised remnant of some antediluvian Armada, she could not have been examined by the men with more intense and breathless curiosity. There was no name on her, no clue of any kind to tell the ship she had belonged to, where she was built, what port she hailed from. There was, indeed, the word “London,” together with some figures branded upon the kegs; but this indicated nothing. They dragged the soaking bags of biscuit out of the locker, where they also found the fragments of the rum-bottles; and deep and numerous were the ejaculations these simple things called forth from the sailors, who gathered a story from them of which my hand is powerless to impart the thrilling pathos to my unvarnished version.

“See here!” said a man, shaking the kegs; “not a drain of water in them!”

“Here’s a boot with a piece cut clean out from the top of it,” said another.

“Some one has tried to make food out o’ that!” said an old salt, shaking a quantity of ringlets. “I’ve heerd tell of worse stuff nor boots being eat by castaway men!”

The fragments of dried biscuit were passed around and examined with wondering attention. The sail, the oars, the gratings—all came in for their share of closest and absorbed scrutiny. But the object that most excited speculation was the poor widow’s shawl, which, having been drenched and dried, and drenched and dried again, had become rotten, was full of holes, and as much resembled a shawl as a waistcoat.

“If this ain’t a curio, I should like to know what is!” said a seaman.

“It’s a bit of a gownd, that’s what I say it is!” exclaimed another authoritatively. “Think I can’t tell what a woman’s dress is like?”

“My notion is,” said an old man, standing aloof, “that there ain’t nothing mortal about it at all, but that it’s just a bit of bunting hoisted by death, to let the people as was in the boat know who their proper skipper was. I hope nobody means to bring it into the forecastle. I’ll not go a-nigh it for one.”

“Bring that thing aft here!” called Anderson; “and turn to there and get about your work.”

The men dispersed, and the watch below rolled into the forecastle, talking under their breaths, and making each other miserable with horrid legends of fire, disease, drowning, and starvation.

The night came. The “Jessie Maxwell” was heeling over to a spanking breeze, and in her cabin the lamp was lighted, and Captain Duff and his chief officer, an Orkney Islander named Banks, a huge, rough, shaggy, honest-looking being, as like a Newfoundland dog as it is possible for a man to be, sat, each with a big glass of whisky and water at his elbow, smoking pipes.

Here was a very different interior from what the “Meteor” had presented. The cabin was about twenty feet long and six feet high, with a broad skylight overhead, and half a dozen sleeping berths around. No gilt and cream colour, nor polished panels, nor Brussels carpets, nor the hundred elegancies of decoration and furniture, that made the “Meteor’s” cuddy as pretty as a drawing-room, were to be found; but solid snuff-coloured doors, with stout hair-cushioned sofas on either side the table that travelled up and down a couple of portly stanchions, so that, when it was not wanted, it could be stowed out of the road. But how suggestive, every plank and beam that met the eye, of strength and durability! Here was a vessel fit to trade in any seas, well manned, with a snugly-stowed cargo, not a quarter of a ton in excess of what she ought to carry, commanded by a shrewd and able seaman out of Glasgow, and by two mates as competent as himself.

The steam from the toddy mingled the fragrance of lemon and honest Glenlivet with the more defined aroma of cavendish tobacco. The captain sat on one sofa and Banks on the other; and they smoked and sipped, and looked steadfastly on one another, as if time were altogether too precious to be wasted in conversation, which must oblige them to devote their lips to other purposes than the pipe-stem and the tumbler.

“I think I did well to get that boat inboard,” said the skipper presently; “a boat’s a boat.”

There was no controverting this position; so Mr. Banks acquiesced with a nod, which he executed like Jove, in a cloud.

“Do you remember the time, Banks,” observed the skipper after a long pause, “when little Angus McKay spun us that yarn in the “Bannockburn,” about his falling in with a ship’s long-boat off the Cape of Good Hope, with a nigger boy and three sheep aboard of her?”

Mr. Banks, after deep deliberation, replied that he minded the story weel.

“A verra curious circumstance,” continued the skipper, “if it wasn’t a lee!”

Another pause, during which the two men sucked their pipes, never remitting their steadfast gaze at each other, unless to turn their eyes upon the tumblers before raising them to their lips.

“Mr. Sherman seems to know what he is about,” said Captain Duff. “He has a fund of humanity in his bosom, and I like to reflect, sir, on his sitting by the poor de’il’s bed watching by him as though he were his ain son.”

Nothing could have been more À propos than this remark, if it were designed to reach the ear of the gentleman referred to; for, as the captain spoke, one of the snuff-coloured doors was opened, and Mr. Sherman came out.

“Hoo’s the patient?” asked the captain.

“He has his senses, though there is such a bewildered look on his face as I don’t think I ever saw on the human countenance,” replied Mr. Sherman, seating himself near the skipper, and looking about for a tumbler; whereat Mr. Banks called in a hurricane-note for “Atam,” meaning Adam. A small red-headed man emerged from somewhere and placed the materials for a glass of whisky toddy before Mr. Sherman.

“Ech!” ejaculated the skipper, “I daresay he is puzzled. So would I be if my last memory left me starving in an open boat and my next one found me warm in bed with the flavour of old Nantz brandy in my inside.”

“I have asked him no questions,” continued Mr. Sherman. “I know enough of doctoring to understand that his life may depend upon rest and silence.”

“My word, sir, you are a very gude-hearted man!” exclaimed the skipper; “and if ever I am shipwrecked, may it be my luck to fall into just such hands as yours. Your health, sir.”

Saying which, he half-emptied his tumbler, a performance that made his merry eyes glisten with delight.

“And the other man is ted?” said Mr. Banks.

“Quite dead, poor soul! Did you ever see anything more heart-rending than his body, captain? Mere skin and bone—and, oh! sir, the expression of his face!” exclaimed Mr. Sherman, holding his hands over his eyes a moment.

“Thirst is an awfu’ thing,” said the skipper, glancing at his tumbler.

“And so is hunger,” observed Mr. Banks, who looked as though a whole ox might hardly serve him for a meal.

“I expect, when the other poor fellow is capable of speaking, that we shall hear a terrible tale,” said Mr. Sherman. “It is very providential that my slight knowledge of medicine should qualify me to deal with him. The greatest care is required in treating persons nearly dead of starvation. I have fed him so far in spoonfuls only. It is my intention to remain with him through the night. I’ll borrow one of your easy-chairs, captain, which will serve me very well for a bed.”

“Certainly. I am sleeping close at hand, and if you want me, just give my cot a shove, and I’ll be out of it before you can tell which side I drop from.”

This settled, the captain mixed himself another tumbler of spirits, refilled his pipe, and entered into speculations as to Holdsworth’s nationality, the length of time he had been in the boat, the probable longitude and latitude in which the ship had taken fire or foundered, with many other matters, all of which he relieved with long pauses, and a variety of thoughtful puffs and attentive glances at the light through the medium of his tumbler. Presently four bells—ten o’clock—struck, which made Mr. Banks rise from his seat, wish his companions “Coot night,” and withdraw to his cabin to get a couple of hours’ sleep before his watch came on. The others remained chatting for half an hour, and then the skipper went on deck to have a look around before turning in for the night.