The following entry was made in the official log-book of a ship named the Oxford:—“Fifth November, 1882, Sunday, 4.0 p.m., lat. 35° 39´ S., long. 18° 53´ E., W. Waters, A.B., while furling the mizzen-topsail fell from the yard into the sea, striking the half round of the poop in his fall. A lifebuoy was promptly thrown him, the ship brought to the wind—it blowing a fresh gale from the S.W., with thick weather and a heavy sea at the time. The port lifeboat was at once lowered, and proceeded under the charge of Mr. A. Bowling, second mate, to pick up the man. Owing, however, to the shock sustained by him in striking the ship, and his being encumbered with oilskins, etc., he sank before the boat could reach him. After an unsuccessful search, the boat returned to the ship and was with difficulty hoisted up, owing to the heavy sea which half filled her. Everything was done that could be done to save the poor fellow. (Signed) J. Braddick, Master.”

Now, here is the whole story, as who would not suppose? The sailor dropped overboard, a boat unsuccessfully searched for him, and then the ship braced her mainyard round and sailed away. But extracts from log-books, I have taken notice, are like the little box which the fisherman in the “Arabian Nights” found upon the sea-shore; when it was opened a wonderful creature shaped itself out, and its figure filled the sky. I particularly realized this when Mr. Bowling gave me a sketch of the yarn of which Captain Braddick’s log is the briefest hint. Why, what a world of adventure, of heroism, of peril grows up out of these marine entries! Is it four lines about a ship rescuing a crew from a sinking vessel; or about a captain coming across a smack’s boat in the middle of the North Sea, with nothing in her but a little crouching, starving boy; or about a brig found drifting helplessly, with her crew, dead of frost, lying upon her deck? Assuredly in those four lines there is the making of a thrilling volume to any man who shall faithfully put his hand to the work and, exaggerating nothing, relate merely the adventure as it befell, and how it came about and ended, and what the actors in it said, and did, and thought. Here, in very brief form, is Mr. Bowling’s own yarn, told with my pen, of an incident as common pretty nearly in its way at sea as the sight of froth blowing into a hollow, or of the curve of the bow-wave flashing green and glass-smooth from the shearing cutwater.

“We left Calcutta on Sept. 4, 1882, with a full cargo, bound for the port of London. All went well—if by well you’ll understand nothing extraordinary outside spells of bothersome head winds, dead calms, and now and again a twister over the quarter to give us legs—until came Sunday, Nov. 5, on which date you’ll see by the extract from the log-book where we were; the glass stood low, and in the morning there was a kind of wild wet light in the sun when he sprang up from behind the dull-coloured sea, and the lustre that came along with him seemed to roll on the top of the swell as if it was burning oil lying there instead of being the up and down flashing of fair weather, when the light sounds the very bottom of the ocean with its silver lead-line, as you may see for yourselves if you’ll watch the break of day under a pure sky and over clean blue water. We were under topgallant-sails, on the starboard tack, the wind about west, with weight enough in it to swear by, and a slow gathering of haze all along the horizon over the port quarter—south-west the bearings would be about—and a thick, deep-breathing swell coming out of it, tumbled by the wind into a bit of a sea that washed with a stormy noise along the bends, and made the ship as uncomfortable as an old cab on a road full of stones.

“I had charge of the deck, and not liking the look of the weather, I went below to tell the captain about it. He had been up pretty near all the night that was gone, and was in his cabin taking some rest. But there’s very little rest for shipmasters, who need to have as many eyes as you find in a peacock’s tail, that they might close two or three of them at a time, if ever they’re to get the amount of sleep that all other kinds of people, barring nautical men, find needful to keep themselves alive on. Well, sir, I called the captain and told him that the weather looked threatening, and straightway he came on deck and took a squint around. The wind was freshening slowly and surely, and the topsails and topgallant-sails, out of whose cloths the wet of last night’s squalls of rain were not yet dried, were stretching as if they would burst under it; and the water to leeward washed like boiling milk all along the scuppers as the ship was rushed by the pressure, taking the seas with a floating jump, and making them roar as she split them with her sharp stem and sent them seething in white smothers on either hand. There were clouds crawling up out of the thickness in the west and south, and passing like smoke over the mastheads, and there was a look of racing about the whole ocean with the sailing of those bits of vapour, and the pelting of the ship, and the wild hurrying rolling of the seas, along which there were sea-birds screeching as they skimmed in their low flight through the driving spray in pursuit of us.

“Well, sir, the fore topgallant-sail was furled and the watch lay aft to roll up the mainsail; but not for long did we hold on with the main topgallant-sail; that was clewed up soon, and the wind freshened as sail was diminished; so that, although half stripped of canvas, the ship was heeling to it as before, whilst there was the hard look of a gale of wind in the sky that you saw grey between the scud; and the thickness was blowing up nearer and nearer, making a mere biscuit’s-throw of the horizon, so that the seas looked lumping things as they rolled, all of a sudden like, out of the haze, and were under the ship and standing up on either hand of her almost as fast as they seemed to be formed. We were now under topsails and foresail only—of the square canvas—when on a sudden there comes a bit of a lull, and a sort of silence aloft that sounded strange after the roaring, and a great noise of washing waters all around; and then plump sweeps up the wind in a wild out-fly out of the south-west, driving the ship forwards until the foam of the cutwater looked to be smothering her head. All hands were called to shorten sail, the three upper topsail halliards were let go, the starboard braces rounded in, and the helm shifted to bring the ship to her course. Four able seamen and four boys went aloft to furl the upper mizzen-topsail. You know the old story: the light hands well out, the older hands in the slings and quarters, and the sail swelling up like a sheet of iron to the wind that blew fair into it in a storm betwixt the two yards. I had my eye on those men I am speaking of, when a blast like a squall swept the canvas out of their fists, and in a breath one of them fell with a twirl and a toss of his clenched hands off the yard, striking the half-round of the poop a blow that came along with the yell of the wind in a frightful thud; and with that, rebounding as a ball might, over he goes into the yeast and froth alongside. It is a horrible thing to happen; it will stop the breathing of the strongest for a minute. The fellows on the yard roared out, ‘Man overboard!’ I sprang aft, and had a life-buoy in my hand in an instant, which I threw fair, as I prayed and believed, to the yellow patch of sou’wester that I saw dark on the foam of the side of a sea; but the wind blew the light thing, like a feather, to leeward of him. But he was swimming—there was life in him, though, man, you should have heard the thump of his fall, and then thought of him struggling there with his great sea-boots full of water, and his heavy oilskins dragging him down, and a rushing of froth over his head every time that a sea swept him up into the snow of its breaking crest. Well, sir, we went to work smartly; the hands came tumbling down from aloft, and the ship was brought to with her main-topsail aback, whilst half a dozen of us were obeying with mad haste the order to clear away the quarter-boat ready for lowering.

“Meanwhile a hand remained in the mizzen-topsail yard to keep the poor fellow in sight, and he was shouting that the man was swimming, and swimming strong; that he didn’t seem to see the life-buoy, but that he was struggling bravely; and I, seeing this too, and driven half mad by the pitiful sight of that sailor and shipmate fighting the whole ocean, as I may put it, and battling it with an English seaman’s courage, sang out, ‘Who’s going to volunteer for the boat?’ There was no hanging back; it was just a leap to see who should be first. As fast as they could tumble in, there they were, six of them, the pick of the crew—merchant seamen, sir, whom we’re being taught to despise; there they were, I say, with the others handling the falls, and every one looking as if the saving of the life of the man astern was his business and nobody’s else; for he was a shipmate, and that means a brother at sea, sir, when the forecastle holds real sailors.

“It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and the mist was driving between the masts. I was in charge of the boat, but try my dead best I could not help her being badly stove before we got away, and the water came in fast as we headed for the spot where the man was last seen. You must go through it to realize the difference between the deck of a ship pitching and rolling, no matter how heavily, and the feel of an open boat released from her side in the same sea. The solid deck you’re fresh from makes the contrast fearfully sharp, and I can well believe what I remember reading in your yarn of the wreck of the Indian Chief, that the survivors of her crew when in the lifeboat owned to being more frightened by the fearful tossing and jumping of the buoyant craft than they were when in their foretop, with the hull of the ship going to pieces under them. We could only pull four oars, for two men had all their work in baling the boat, one with a sou’wester and the other with a sea-boot, those being our balers. My duty lay at the helm, in watching for the man and looking out for the seas. Bitterly cold it was, the sun going down, the haze thick around, and the ship a mere heaving darkness upon it when we had measured but a few lengths from her. I looked narrowly about me, but could see nothing of the man. Sometimes a lump of green water tumbling over the foam would show like his head, and my heart would leap: but the next moment the clear sea would roll away from the blowing froth and explain what the deception was. We pulled to the buoy, but it was empty.

“Then one of the men said, ‘Supposing even Bill had not been hurt by the fall, surely he couldn’t live in such a sea as this.’ And another said, ‘Think of his wraps and oilskins, sir. The best swimmer in the world couldn’t hold up all these minutes under such drags.’ But they spoke not as if they wished to give up, but as if preparing themselves for the disappointment. Had he hurt himself more than we could know? Was he broken and dying when he touched the water, and were his struggles there the despairing efforts of a broken and dying man? We strained our eyes, but could see nothing save the boiling heads of the seas which came roaring down upon us and threatened with every desperate swing to fill the boat. Still we kept up heart. ‘Another pull, boys! impossible to go back without him!’ I would cry, whilst the two fellows in the bottom were chucking the water out over the side, and the thickness stood like a wall around.

“Well, for three-quarters of an hour did we hang about, pulling in all directions, and thinking only of finding and saving him; and then we gave up and looked round for the ship. I could not see her. I sung out to the men, ‘Do you see the ship?’ and they turned their heads upon their shoulders to look; and the chap in the bow cries out, when we were standing nearly end on up the side of a sea, ‘There she is, I think.’

“Well, to be sure, I could see her, but it might as well have been the thickening of the mist that way as the ship, for she made a shadow scarcely noticeable, and I looked with dismay at the distance that lay before us to row over, and at the water that was coming into the boat as fast as the two men could bale it out, and at the terrible sea around us. We had got into such a situation that the seas ran right abeam, and every send drove us to leeward, and sometimes the mist swept down so thick that there was never a man of us all who could see the ship, though, thanks be to Heaven, it did not come to our losing sight of her for good. It was a bad job for us that the heaving and straining of the boat caused her to leak worse and worse. But for her leaking I could have put the two men who were baling her to the oars, and they would have been just the sort of help we wanted; instead of which they were scarcely able to prevent the boat from filling. It would, however, have been destruction to us to have set more men than those two at the job they were on. Every moment was precious; the afternoon was fast waning; in a short while the night would be upon us, and I knew quite surely that if it came before we fetched the ship we were doomed men. Oh, sir, it was a fierce bit of labour. In the midst of our struggles a squall of sleet blew down and hid the whole surface of the ocean to within our own length of us; but it cleared off, and when it was gone the mist thinned somewhat, and gave us a better view of the ship, at whose peak we could see a colour streaming as a signal of recall. Never was any man of us nearer to death in his life than he was during the time we occupied in reaching the vessel. That we did reach her you may reckon, or I should not be here to tell you this story. But by the hour we had pulled across her head and dropped along the port side of her, the water in the boat was up to the thwarts, we showed scarce more than our gunwale, it was almost dark, the sea had increased in volume, and the wind was blowing half a hurricane. We were fairly exhausted when we gained the deck, but humbly grateful as we were for the preservation of our lives, ne’er a one of us could cast a look over the quarter in the place where our shipmate had gone down, and where the darkness of the evening now lay, with the white foam showing with startling clearness upon the sides of those black rushing hills, without feeling that our thankfulness would have been deeper had we been allowed to rescue the man whom we had been very near to losing our lives to save.”