第64章

"Heaven forbid!" said Hazel, surprised and alarmed. "Why, you are not wounded mortally, as Cooper was. Have a good heart, man, and we three will all see old England yet."

"Well, sir," said Welch, coolly, "I'll tell ye. Me and my shipmate, Prince, was a cutting at one another with our knives a smart time (and I do properly wonder, when I think of that day's work, for I liked the man well enough, but rum atop of starvation plays hell with seafaring men), well, sir, as I was a saying, he let more blood out of me than I could afford to lose under the circumstances. And, ye see, I can't make fresh blood, because my throat is so swelled by the drought I can't swallow much meat, so I'm safe to lose the number of my mess; and, another thing, my heart isn't altogether set toward living. Sam, here, he give me an order; what, didn't ye hear him? 'I'll lie to outside the bar,' says he, 'till you come out.' He expects me to come out in his wake. Don't ye, Sam--that was?" and he laid his hand gently on the remains. "Now, sir, I shall ax the lady and you a favor. I want to lie alongside Sam. But if you bury him in the sea, and me ashore, why, d--n my eyes if I shan't be a thousand years or so before I can find my own messmate. Etarnity is a 'nation big place, I'm told, a hundred times as big as both oceans. No, sir; you'll make land, by Sam's reckoning, tomorrow or next day, wind and tide permitting. I'll take care of Sam's hull till then, and we'll lie together till the angel blows that there trumpet; and then we'll go aloft together, and, as soon as ever we have made our scrape to our betters, we'll both speak a good word for you and the lady, a very pretty lady she is, and a good-hearted, and the best plucked one I ever did see in any distressed craft; now don't ye cry, miss, don't ye cry, your trouble is pretty near over; _he_ said you was not a hundred miles from land. I don't know how he knew that, he was always a better seaman than I be; but say it he did, and that is enough, for he was a man as never told a lie, nor wasted a word."

Welch could utter no more just then; for the glands of his throat were swollen, and he spoke with considerable difficulty.

What could Hazel reply? The judgment is sometimes ashamed to contradict the heart with cold reasons.

He only said, with a sigh, that he saw no signs of land, and believed they had gone on a wrong course, and were in the heart of the Pacific.

Welch made no answer, but a look of good-natured contempt. The idea of this parson contradicting Sam Cooper!

The sun broke, and revealed the illimitable ocean; themselves a tiny speck on it.

Mr. Hazel whispered Miss Rolleston that Cooper _must_ be buried to-day.

At ten P.M. they passed through more sea-weed; but this time they had to eat the sea spinach raw, and there was very little of it.

At noon the sea was green in places.

Welch told them this was a sign they were nearing land.

At four P.M. a bird, about the size and color of a woodpecker, settled on the boat's mast.

Their glittering eyes fastened on it; and Welch said, "Come, there's a supper for you as _you_ can eat it."

"No, poor thing!" said Helen Rolleston.

"You are right," said Hazel, with a certain effort of self-restraint.

"Let our sufferings make us gentle, not savage. That poor bird is lost like us upon this ocean. It is a land-bird."

"How do you know?"

"Water-birds have webbed feet--to swim with." The bird, having rested, flew to the northwest.

Helen, by one of those inspired impulses her sex have, altered the boat's course directly, and followed the bird.

Half an hour before sunset, Helen Rolleston, whose vision was very keen, said she saw something at the verge of the horizon, like a hair standing upright.

Hazel looked, but could not see anything.

In ten minutes more, Helen Rolleston pointed it out again; and then Hazel did see a vertical line, more like a ship's mast than anything else one could expect to see there.

Their eyes were now strained to make it out, and, as the boat advanced, it became more and more palpable, though it was hard to say exactly what it was.

Five minutes before the sun set, the air being clearer than ever, it stood out clean against the-sky. A tree--a lofty, solitary tree; with a tall stem, like a column, and branches only at the top.

A palm-tree--in the middle of the Pacific.