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Updated: June 2, 2025
Several times did the sea break quite over them; and but that Lilly Lalee and little William were fast tied to the foot of the mast, they would both have been washed off, and probably lost amidst the dark waste of waters.
I have said that all of them went to sleep. It was not their usual custom to do so. On other nights one was always upon the watch, either the captain himself, the ex-cook, or the boy. Of course Lilly Lalee enjoyed immunity from this kind of duty: since she was not, properly speaking, one of the "crew," but only a "passenger."
Ben!" answered William, as he lay kicking among the contents of the kit, "Lilly Lalee, she's knocked overboard by the boom! Save her! save her!" The sailor needed neither the information nor the appeal thus addressed to him.
This was hoisted out again, filled with the sweet fluid which the keg contained; and which was at once administered, first to Lilly Lalee, then to William's own especial protector, Ben Brace; and lastly, after a fresh draw from the keg, to the real owner of the wine, the Coromantee.
"I'm on a raft of my own. Have you one, Snowball?" "Ya, massa Ben, ya! I make um out o' de wreck an de water-cask." "Are ye all alone?" "Not 'zackly dat. The pickaninny be long wi' me, de cabing gal. You know de lilly Lalee?" "Oh! she it be!" muttered Ben, now remembering the little cabin passenger of the Pandora. "You bean't movin', be you?"
The little Lalee had also borne part in these nocturnal vigils, taking her turn when Snowball became too weary to keep awake; and so, in alternate watches, had the two been in the habit of tiring out the long hours of the night. To this practice the sixth night had proved an exception.
The plash occasioned by little Lalee as she was flung upon the water, and the heavier concussion of Ben's body as he plunged overboard, had reached the monster's ears; and, with that fell instinct peculiar to its tribe, it had suddenly turned in the water, and commenced swimming toward the wake of the craft; where it knew that anything, whether human or otherwise, falling overboard, must inevitably drift.
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.
Snowball, sans ceremonie, was shaken out of his slumbers; and the process of restoring him to wakefulness also awoke little William and Lilly Lalee, so that the whole crew were now up and ready for action.
That one was Lilly Lalee. After launching the kit, little William did not think of surrendering himself to inaction. He bethought him that something more should be done, that some other waifs should be turned adrift from the Catamaran, which, by getting into the way of the swimmers, might offer them an additional chance of support. What next? A plank? No; a cask, one of the empty water-casks?
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