The Ocean Waifs: A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea

But the memory of that conflagration did not assist him in determining the character of the spectacle now before his eyes. On the decks of the Pandora he had seen men endeavouring to escape from the flames, in every attitude of wild terror. On the ship now in sight he beheld the very reverse. He saw human beings standing in front of the column of fire, not only unconcerned at its proximity, but apparently feeding the flames!

It was a spectacle to startle the most experienced mariner, and call forth the keenest alarm, – a sight to suggest the double interrogatory, – “Is it a phantom ship, or a ship on fire?”

Chapter Ninety Nine.

A Whaler “Trying-Out.”

In making the observations above detailed, the boy-sailor had been occupied scarce ten seconds of time, – only while his eye took in the singular spectacle thus abruptly brought before it. He did not stay to seek out of his own thoughts an answer to the question that suggested itself; but giving way to the terrified surprise which the apparition had caused him, he raised a shout which instantly awoke his companions.

Each of the three, on the instant of their awaking, gave utterance to a quick cry, but their shouts, although heard simultaneously, were significant of very different emotions. The cry of the girl was simply a scream, expressive of the wildest terror. That of Snowball was a confused mingling of surprise and alarm; while to the astonishment of William, and the other as well, the utterance of the sailor was a shout of unrestrained joy, accompanied by the action of suddenly springing to his feet, – so suddenly that the Catamaran was in danger of being capsized by the abrupt violence of the movement.

He did not give them time to ask for an explanation, but on the moment of getting himself into an erect attitude he commenced a series of shouts and exclamations, all uttered in the very highest key of which his voice was capable.

And among these utterances, and conspicuously intoned, was the well-known hail, “Ship ahoy!” followed by other nautical phrases, denoting the recognition of a ship.

“Golly! it am a ship,” interposed Snowball, “a ship on de fire!”

“No! no!” impatiently answered the ex-whalesman, “nothing o’ the sort. It’s a whaler ‘tryin’-out’ her oil. Don’t you see the men yonder, standin’ by the try-works, are throwin’ in the ‘scraps’? Lord o’ mercy! if they should pass us without hearing our hail! Ship ahoy! whaler ahoy!” And the sailor once more put forth his cries with all the power that lay in his lungs.

To this was added the stentorian voice of the Coromantee, who, quickly catching the explanation given by the ex-whalesman, saw the necessity of making himself heard.

For some moments the deck of the Catamaran rang with the shouts, “Ship ahoy!”

“Whaler ahoy!” that might have been heard far over the ocean, – much farther than the distance at which the strange vessel appeared to be; but, to the consternation of those who gave utterance to those cries, no answer was returned.

They could now distinctly see the ship, and almost everything aboard of her; for the two columns of flame rising high in forward of her foremast, out of the huge double furnace of the “try-works,” illuminated not only the decks of the vessel, but the surface of the sea for miles around her.

They could see rolling sternward immense volumes of thick smoke, gleaming yellow under the light of the blazing fires; and the figures of men looming like giants in the glare of the garish flames, – some standing in front of the furnace, others moving about, and actively engaged in some species of industry, that to the eye of any other than a whalesman might have appeared supernatural.

Notwithstanding the distinctness with which they saw all these things, and the evident proximity of the ship, those on the raft could not make themselves heard, shout as loudly as they would.

This might have appeared strange to the Catamarans, and led them to believe that it was, in reality, a phantom ship they were hailing, and the gigantic figures they saw were those of spectres instead of men.

But the experience of the ex-whalesman forbade any such belief. He knew the ship to be a whaler, the moving forms to be men, – her crew, – and he knew, moreover, the reason why these had not answered his hail. They had not heard it. The roaring of the great furnace fires either drowned or deadened every other sound; even the voices of the whalesmen themselves, as they stood close to each other.

Ben Brace remembered all this; and the thought that the ship might pass them, unheard and unheeded, filled his mind with dread apprehension.

But for a circumstance in their favour this might have been the lamentable result. Fortunately, however, there was a circumstance that led to a more happy termination of that chance encounter of the two strange crafts, – the Catamaran and the whale-ship.

The latter, engaged, as appearances indicated, in the process of “trying-out” the blubber of some whale lately harpooned, was “laying-to” against the wind; and, of course not making much way, nor caring to make it, through the water.

As she was coming up slowly, her head set almost “into the wind’s eye,” the Catamarans, well to windward, would have no difficulty in getting their craft close up to her.

The sailor was not slow in perceiving their advantageous position; and as soon as he became satisfied that the distance was too great for their hail to be heard, he sprang to the steering-oar, turned the helm “hard a port,” and set his craft’s head on towards the whaler, as if determined to run her down.

In a few seconds the raft was surging along within a cable’s length of the whaler’s bows, when the cry of “Ship ahoy!” was once more raised by both Snowball and the sailor. Though the hail was heard, the reply was not instantaneous; for the crew of the whale-ship, guided by the shouts of those on the raft, had looked forth upon the illumined water, and, seeing such a strange embarkation right under their bows, were for some moments silent through sheer surprise.

The ex-whalesman, however, soon made himself intelligible, and in ten minutes after the crew of the Catamaran, instead of shivering in wet clothes, with hungry stomachs to make them still more miserable, might have been seen standing in front of an immense fire, with an ample supply of wholesome food set before them, and surrounded by a score of rude but honest men, each trying to excel the other in contributing to their comfort.

Chapter One Hundred.

The End of the “Yarn.”

Ocean Waifs no longer, the crew of the Catamaran became embodied with that of the ship, and her little passenger found kindness and protection in the cabin of the whaler.

The Catamaran herself was not “cut loose” in the nautical sense of the term, and abandoned, but she was cut loose in a literal sense, and in pieces hoisted aboard the ship to be employed for various purposes, – her ropes, spars, and sail to be used at some time as they had been originally intended – her other timbers to go to the stock of the carpenter, and her casks to the cooper, to be eventually filled with the precious sperm-oil which the ship’s crew were engaged in trying out.

The old whalesman was not long aboard before getting confirmed in his conjecture that the ship was the same whose boats had harpooned and “drogued” the cachalot, the carcass of which had been encountered by the Catamaran. It was one of a large “pod” of whales, of which the boats had been in pursuit, and these, along with the ship, having followed its companions to a great distance, and killed several of them in the chase, had lost all bearings of the one first struck.

It had been their intention to go in search of it, as soon as they should try out the others that had been captured; and the information now given by Ben Brace to the captain of the whaler would enable the latter the more easily to discover the lost prize, which he estimated at the value of seventy or eighty barrels of oil, and therefore well worth the trouble of going back for. On the day after the castaways had been taken aboard, the whale-ship, having extinguished the fires of her try-works, started in search of the drogued whale.

The ex-crew of the Catamaran had by this time given a full account of their adventures to the whalesmen; at the same time expressing their belief that the ruffians on the big raft would be found by the carcass they were in search of. The prospect of such an encounter could not fail to interest the crew of the whaler; and as they advanced in the direction in which they expected to find the drogued cachalot, all eyes were bent searchingly upon the sea.

So far as the dead whale was concerned, they were successful in their search. Just as the sun was going down, they came in sight of it; and before the twilight had passed they “hove to” along side of it. The vast flock of sea birds perched upon the floating mass, and that rose into the air as the ship approached them, proclaimed the absence of human beings. The great raft was not there, nor were there any indications that it had revisited the carcass. On the contrary, that curious structure, the crane, which the Catamarans had erected on the summit of the floating mass, was still standing just as they had left it; only that the flakes of shark’s flesh were scorched to the hue and texture of a cinder, and the fire that had burnt them was no longer blazing beneath.

The fate of the slaver’s castaway crew did not long remain a mystery. Three days after, when the carcass of the cachalot had been “flensed” and tried out, and the whaler had once more proceeded upon her cruise, she chanced upon a spot where the sea was strewn with a variety of objects, among which were two or three spars of a ship, and several empty water-casks. In these objects there was no difficulty in recognising the wreck of the Pandora’s raft, which was drifting at no great distance from the place where they had been cutting up the cachalot.

The conclusion was easily arrived at. The gale, which had been successfully weathered by the carefully constructed Catamaran, had proved too violent for the larger embarkation, loosely lashed together, and negligently navigated as it was. As a consequence it had gone to pieces; while the wretches who had occupied it, not having the strength to cling either to cask or spar, had indubitably gone to the bottom. As little William afterwards related —

“So perished the slaver’s crew. Not one of them, – either those in the gig or on the raft, ever again saw the shore. They perished upon the face of the wide ocean – miserably perished, without hand to help or eye to weep over them!”

In truth did it seem as if their destruction had been an act of the Omnipotent Himself, to avenge the sable-skinned victims of their atrocious cruelty!

Were it our province to write the after history of the Catamarans, we could promise ourselves a pleasant task, perhaps pleasanter than recording the cruise of that illustrious craft.

We have space only to epitomise. The day after setting foot upon the deck of the whale-ship, Snowball was appointed chef de caboose, in which distinguished office he continued for several years; and only resigned it to accept of a similar situation on board a fine bark, commanded by Captain Benjamin Brace, engaged in the African trade. But not that African trade carried on by such ships as the Pandora. No; the merchandise transported in Captain Brace’s bark was not black men, but white ivory, yellow gold-dust, palm-oil, and ostrich-plumes; and it was said, that, after each “trip” to the African coast, the master, as well as owner, of this richly laden bark, was accustomed to make a trip to the Bank of England, and there deposit a considerable sum of money.

After many years spent thus professionally, and with continued success, the ci-devant whalesman, man-o’-war’s-man, ex-captain of the Catamaran, and master of the African trader, retired from active life; and, anchored in a snug craft in the shape of a Hampstead Heath villa, is now enjoying his pipe, his glass of grog, and his otium cum dignitate.

As for “Little William,” he in turn ceased to be known by this designation. It was no longer appropriate when he became the captain of a first-class clipper-ship in the East Indian trade, – standing upon his own quarter-deck full six feet in his shoes, and finely proportioned at that, – so well as to both face and figure, that he had no difficulty in getting “spliced” to a wife that dearly loved him.

She was a very beautiful woman, with a noble round eye, jet black waving hair, and a deep brunette complexion. Many of his acquaintances were under the impression that she had Oriental blood in her veins, and that he had brought her home from India on one of his return voyages from that country. Those more intimate with him could give a different account, – one received from himself; and which told them that his wife was a native of Africa, of Portuguese extraction, and that her name was Lalee.

They had heard, moreover, that his first acquaintance with her had commenced on board a slave bark; and that their friendship as children, – afterwards ripening into love, – had been cemented while both were castaways upon a raft – Ocean Waifs in the middle of the Atlantic.

The End