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Updated: April 30, 2025
All our oars were laid in, and the men threw themselves along the thwarts, and declared that they should sleep there till some vessel should pass near enough to take us on board. Our stock of food had diminished very much, and I feared, on examining it, that we should scarcely have enough to carry us to the English coast, even should a breeze spring up from the southward to help us along.
Our hotel sits at the water's edge at least its front garden does and we walk among the shrubbery and smoke at twilight; we look afar off at Switzerland and the Alps, and feel an indolent willingness to look no closer; we go down the steps and swim in the lake; we take a shapely little boat and sail abroad among the reflections of the stars; lie on the thwarts and listen to the distant laughter, the singing, the soft melody of flutes and guitars that comes floating across the water from pleasuring gondolas; we close the evening with exasperating billiards on one of those same old execrable tables.
"Bill," said he, "I'm afraid it is a woman, a dear friend of mine, a very dear friend." Bill, a lover, understood the tone. "We'll take care of her between us," he said. The two turned at once to the little tub of a boat. Oars? Yes, slung under the thwarts, a pair of short sculls, worn and split, but with work in them still. There they hung ready, and a rusty boat-hook, besides.
It was arranged that Ned and I should have the first watch in our boat, and as soon as supper was over, the rest of the party stowed themselves away as best they could on or under the thwarts.
At length he rose to his feet and took off his coat. Then he turned to Jack. "Give me yours," he said briefly. Jack obeyed without question. Tying the two coats securely together, Frank loosened one of the thwarts in the little boat. He pulled some strong string from his pocket and soon had improvised a little sail.
For the next two hours slowly and silently ammunition and such food as they possessed in the shape of preserved meats and such like from the captain's store were lowered down and packed in the bottom of the boat and beneath the thwarts, and this was hardly done when a dull glow seemed to show up the window above their head.
Next, with a golden comb he combed his long dark curls, and he gathered his arrows out of the bodies of the dead, and out of the thwarts and the sides of the ship, cleansed them, and laid them back in the quiver.
The mate remained forward; the man at the helm stood motionless, and, I hoped, was asleep. I slipped into the boat, and passing the slack of the falls under two thwarts, gently lowered myself down. I had, the day before, unobserved, thoroughly greased the blocks. My chief fear now was, that the splash the boat would make on reaching the water would be heard.
Two dropped into the dory and thirteen jumped from the vessel's rail onto thwarts or netting or into the bottom of the seine-boat anywhere at all so that they get in quickly. As extra hand on deck I had to stand by and pay out the painter. In the middle of it came the skipper sliding down from the mast-head.
They were lying very still on their sides on the bottom boards between the thwarts, curled up like dogs. My boat's crew, leaning over the looms of their oars, stared and listened as if at the play. The master of the brig looked up suddenly to ask me what day it was. They had lost the date.
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