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Knowing we had no small boat, Monsieur Gallois lost no time, but lowering a yawl of his own, he came alongside of us in person. As I had commanded the three Frenchmen to remain below, he found no one on deck but Marble, Diogenes, Neb and myself. "Parbleu, Monsieur Vallingfort!" exclaimed the privateersman, saluting me very civilly notwithstanding appearances "c'est bien extraordinaire!
I was out in the yawl twice, and then we got through, but the infernal steamboat came near running over us . . . . The "Maria Denning" was aground at the head of the island; they hailed us; we ran alongside, and they hoisted us in and thawed us out. We had been out in the yawl from four in the morning until half-past nine without being near a fire.
The flood did not go much farther than this, and Yawl was busy with his boat. But we shall soon know; the cliffs are in sight." Besides Yawl and his helpers, we found on the beach about thirty men and women, the saved of two thousand. Among them was one of the priests ordained by the abbé.
"First of all, we must go down to the oasis and see whether any of the people are left alive." "You are right. When we have done what we can for the others it will be time enough to think about ourselves." "Are there any others?" I thought, for I greatly doubted whether we should find any alive, except, perhaps, Yawl and the three or four men who were helping him.
The shallop, commanded by M. Espiau, ensign of the ship, took forty-five passengers, and put off. The boat, called the Senegal, took twenty-five; the pinnace thirty-three; and the yawl, the smallest of all the boats, took only ten.
Having got the Yawl in Tow, we stood away after the pinnace North-North-East and North by East to 2 other low Islands, having 2 Shoals, which we could see without and one between us and the Main. At Noon we were about 4 Leagues from the Main land, which we could see Extending to the Northward as far as North-West by North, all low, flat, and Sandy.
Shortly before ten o'clock he came out into an open place opposite the village, and saw the ferryboat lying in the shadow of the trees and the high bank. Everything was quiet under the blinking stars. He crept down the bank, watching with all his eyes, slipped into the water, swam three or four strokes and climbed into the skiff that did "yawl" duty at the boat's stern.
The stern-sheets of the barge and yawl were filled with goats and two calves, who were the first destined victims to the butcher's knife; while the remainder of their space was occupied by hay and other provender, pressed down by powerful machinery into the smallest compass.
"Death, off Cape Croker, of Congressman Lockwin!" There may be two congressmen of that name. There may be two! It is a dying hope. Can the eyes cling to the column long enough to read that paragraph? "Congressman David Lockwin, of the First Illinois, died of his wounds about daylight in a yawl off Cape Croker. His body is lost with the yawl!" There is a shriek that awakens the household.
The night was so fine that I ventured inland, and after walking more than a mile, most of the distance in a grove of cocoa and bananas, I came to the basin of water that is usually found in the islands of this particular formation. The inlet from the sea was at no great distance, and I sent one of the men back to the yawl, with orders for the boat to proceed thither.
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