The emigrant ship and our kind captain—Get on board a homeward-bound ship—An unexpected encounter—My old captain—A converted man—A crippled ship—Land at Bermuda—Once more sail for England—Pressed again.
The good ship Nieuwland made rapid progress. Though I was flying away from home and all I longed to be with, yet anything was better than moving slowly. If we did not fall in with any ship in which I might return, I felt that the sooner I got to the end of the voyage, the sooner I might be starting back again. The gale continued for several days; the wind at length dropped and then came ahead, blowing stronger than ever. It was now necessary to heave the ship to.
In performing the operation, a heavy sea struck her bows, and two more of the crew were washed overboard. Happily the emigrants were below, or many would probably have shared the same fate.
I had now what I much required, abundance of work as a seaman. When it is well for a person to fly from his own thoughts, there is nothing like useful occupation to help him along; nothing is so bad as to allow oneself to dwell on one’s misfortunes. The best advice I can give to a man when he is unhappy, is to go and help others. He will find plenty of people requiring his aid, and numbers far more unhappy than himself.
The ship had suffered a good deal during the gale, and we began to be apprehensive for her safety should the weather continue bad; but it soon cleared up, and we had every hopes of reaching our port in a week or ten days at the farthest. The day after the fair weather set in, a sail was reported ahead. As we drew near each other, we saw that she was in a very shattered condition. She was a brig, we perceived, but only one mast was standing. Her bowsprit was carried away, and her foremast was gone by the board.
Our captain made a signal to ask what assistance was required. The answer was, “Some spars for our foremast and bowsprit, and some hands who may be willing to return to England to help navigate the ship. We have lost five overboard.”
Our kind captain called us all aft. “Here is an opportunity for those who may desire it to return home,” said he. “The brig is in no very good plight, as you see; but many a vessel in a worse condition has made a safe voyage. I will not advise you either way. I shall be very sorry to lose you, but you are at liberty to go.”
We thanked him very much for this additional proof of his love of justice and fair dealing, and La Motte and I consulted together what we would do. I at all events was ready to run every risk for the sake of returning home. I also felt that we might be the means of saving the brig and the people on board her.
La Motte agreed to accompany me; so we told the captain that we would go. Andrews and another man said that they would accompany us. Our captain therefore signalled that he would afford all the help asked for, and told the people in the brig in the meantime to send a boat on board us. As we passed under the counter of the brig, previous to heaving to, a man standing on her taffrail hailed us through his speaking-trumpet:
“We cannot do what you ask; we have not a boat that can swim, and we have only four hands remaining on board.”
It struck me as I looked at the man that I knew his figure, and even the tone of his voice; but where I had seen him I could not tell. While the ship was being hove-to, we went round to bid farewell to the numerous friends we had found on board. Had we been brothers, we could not have been treated more kindly, and to no one was our gratitude more due than to the honest Bremen captain.
The boat was ready; we stepped into her, with a couple of spars towing astern. The captain took his seat in the stern-sheets.
“I’ll go on board and see my brother skipper,” said he. “Now, my sons, farewell. I shall not forget you, and you will not forget me, I hope. We may never meet together again in this world, or we may; but I hope that we shall all be steering the same course to that world which will last for ever and ever. Don’t ever forget that world, my sons. Whatever you do, wherever you go, always keep it in view. It is of more value than gold or much fine gold. Get, I say, on that course, and do not let any one ever tempt you to alter it. In fair weather or foul, steadily steer for it, and you will be sure to make it at last.”
We all listened attentively to the good man’s words; he spoke with so much earnestness, and had given us so strong a proof of his practical Christianity, that we could not but feel that they merited our respect. The captain of the brig—the same man who had hailed us with the speaking-trumpet—stood at the gangway to receive us when we pulled alongside.
I rubbed my eyes as I looked at him. I rubbed and rubbed again.
There stood, scarcely altered, it appeared to me, a man I had believed long since swallowed up by the hungry waves, Captain Tooke, once the master of the Fate, the brig in which I had been wrecked off the Scilly Islands. If it was not him,—saved by some wonderful means,—I felt sure that it was a brother or near relative; for if he was not my old captain, no two people could be more alike. The sea had gone down completely, so that we without difficulty boarded the brig. Her master thanked the Bremen captain very warmly for the assistance he had brought him, and welcomed us.
“You are brave lad? for coming on board such a wreck of a craft as mine is,” said he, looking at us, and putting out his hand to La Motte. “However, if we are mercifully favoured by fine weather, we will get her all ataunto before long.”
We told him that if the ship was sound in hull, we had no fears about the matter; we should soon get her to rights.
“That’s the spirit I liked to see,” he answered, and then turning to the Bremen captain, he continued, “Tell me, my friend, how much am I to pay you for these spars? Ask your own price. They are invaluable to me.”
“Nothing,” was the answer. “I had several to spare, and none have been lost during the voyage. Well, if you press the point, you may pay the value over to these men when you reach your own country. They have lost their all from being taken prisoners, and will require something to take them to their homes.”
“That I will, with all my heart,” answered the captain of the brig.
While he was speaking, I kept looking at him. Though his features were the same, his way of expressing himself was so different to that of Captain Tooke, that I felt I must be mistaken.
Farewells were said between the two captains, and once more the Bremen captain shook hands with us all round. The emigrants cheered as the ship bore up round us, and away she went to the west, while we lay as near the wind as our dismasted state would allow us.
I was anxious to settle the question as to the identity of the captain, so I asked one of the men what his name was. He somewhat startled me by answering “Tooke.” He, however, could tell me nothing about his past history; so I went up to the captain himself, and asked him if he had not been on board the Fate when she was wrecked?
“Yes,” he replied; “I was the sole survivor of all on board that unfortunate craft.”
“No, sir, you were not,” I answered, and I told him how a number of us had got away in the boat, and how all, with the exception of old Cole, Iffley, and I, had been lost, and how the old mate had died, and we were the only ones left. He told me that when the mast went overboard, he had clung to it, and that the tide had carried it out into mid-channel. When morning broke, he found himself close to a vessel hove-to. The wind then began to fall, and the sea to go down, and in a short time they sent a boat and picked him up. He by that time was very much exhausted, and could scarcely have held out another quarter of an hour.
He himself had been all his life utterly careless about religion; but while he was hanging on to the mast amid the raging ocean, he had been led to think of the future, towards which he felt that he was probably hastening, and he could not help discerning the finger of God in thus bringing him directly up to the only vessel within many miles of him. When he got on board, however, he was struck by the utter want of respect shown by the master and all the crew for anything like religion. He and they were scoffers and blasphemers and professed infidels. He said that he was so horrified and shocked at all he heard, that he trembled lest he might have become like them.
From that time forward he prayed that he might be enlightened and reformed, and he felt truly a new heart put into him. He had never since gone back. He had met with many misfortunes and hardships. He had been frequently shipwrecked; had lost all his property; had been taken prisoner by the enemy; had been compelled to serve as mate instead of master; and had scarcely ever been able to visit his family on shore. Still he went on, trusting in God’s mercy, and feeling sure that whatever happened to him was for the best.
“And, sir,” said I, when he had finished his account of himself, “I heartily agree with you. I have often fainted and often doubted, but I have always come back to the same opinion, that what is, is best—that is, that whatever God does is best for us.”
This conversation, by the bye, did not take place at once. We first set to work to get the ship to rights. We got sheers up, and, the weather being calm, we without difficulty got the new mast stepped, and another bowsprit rigged. The mast was only a jury-mast, but we set it up well with stays, and it carried sail fairly.
While we were working away, I observed the countenance of one of the men who was doing duty as mate, he being the most experienced of the three survivors of the crew.
“I am certain that you must be an old shipmate of mine,” said I as we were hauling away together. “Is not your name Flood, and were you not on board the Kite schooner when we were attacked by pirates?”
“The very same, lad,” said he. “And you—I remember you, too, very well now—you are Will Weatherhelm.”
“The same; and is it not extraordinary that thus, in the middle of the Atlantic, I should meet with two men whom I have not heard of for years, and one of whom I thought was dead?”
“Not more extraordinary than that those two men should have become thoroughly changed characters,” he answered. “I was a careless reprobate, Weatherhelm, when you knew me, and now I have learned to think and to pray, and to strive to do well.”
It certainly was surprising to me to hear John Flood speak as he did, for, unhappily, in those days there were not many seamen who could say the same for themselves. But, poor fellows, their opportunities were few of hearing anything about religion, and I believe men will be judged according to the advantages they may have possessed. Let those take heed, therefore, who have them, that they do not throw them away.
Flood gave me an account of the way the brig—the Fair Rosamond was her name—met with her accident. It was indeed providential that she and all on board had not perished. She had sailed from Port Royal, in Jamaica, bound for Liverpool, with several other vessels, under convoy of a frigate. The first part of the voyage was favourable, but the Fair Rosamond was very deeply laden with sugar and rum and other West India produce, and being then out of trim, she proved herself............