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We suffered much and made a narrow escape; but fortune befriended us, as well as our mates in the long-boat. We landed, in fine, more dead than alive, after four days of intense distress, upon the beach opposite Roanoke Island. We remained here a week, were not ill-treated by the wreckers, and at length obtained a passage to New York.
Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the long-boat, with the shoulder of mutton sail, with which I sailed above a thousand miles on the coast of Africa; but this was in vain. Then I thought I would go and look on our ship's boat, which, as I have said, was blown up upon the shore a great way in the storm, when we were first cast away.
We found the natives did not disturb or concern themselves much about us; nor did they inquire, or perhaps know, whether we stayed among them or not, much less that our ship was gone quite away, and had cast us off, as was our case; for the next morning, after we had sent back the long-boat, the ship stood away to the south-east, and in four hours' time was out of our sight.
As we walked with our faces forward I was amused by watching old Tom, who, marline-spike in hand, was stropping a block, now inspecting the work of one man, now that of another, and then giving his attention to a lad, seated on the spars stowed under the long-boat, engaged in splicing an eye to the end of a rope.
The long-boat was fitted with a couple of masts, carrying a large mainsail and a mizzen, both of which the skipper now ordered to be set, the former close-reefed to half its size.
Sometime in the first dog-watch her boom went over and she ran her slim nose in past Cape May, heading up the Delaware with the hurrying tide, while the brig's long-boat, towing behind, swung into her wake astern.
The enemy were now a little forward of the beam of the tug, and not more than fifty yards from her; but Christy was satisfied that the Leopard would go clear of the long-boat if his craft was not disabled. The major and his companions could not help seeing that Captain Pecklar had deserted their cause, and that, with the gun on the deck, he was a dangerous enemy.
After this, the skipper told the men to lie down round the fire, which we found very grateful when the sun had set, besides its enabling us to dry our wet clothes; but the crew were warned that they would have to rouse up about midnight, when Captain Billings expected the tide would have gone down sufficiently to enable us to get the long-boat out of danger, and turn her over on the beach beyond high-water mark.
The jolly-boat had been already veered astern on receiving her allotted number, the long-boat only waiting alongside for the skipper, with a man in the bows and another amidships, fending her off from the ship's side with a couple of boat-hooks, so that the little barque should not dash against the hull of the bigger one, now she was so loaded up a collision would have insured destruction to all in her, the huge billows of the Southern Ocean rolling in at intervals, and raising her so high aloft as to overtop the ship sometimes, and again carrying her down right under the Esmeralda's counter, thus making her run the risk of being stove in every instant.
He was very very quiet, but off his balance evidently. Would you believe it? He wanted to take a length of old stream-cable and a kedge-anchor with him in the long-boat. We said, 'Ay, ay, sir, deferentially, and on the quiet let the thing slip overboard. The heavy medicine-chest went that way, two bags of green coffee, tins of paint fancy, paint! a whole lot of things.
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