DEAD MAN’S RAFT.

The Voyage to the Azores and an Episode.

So the desire of every man on board the White Wings became that of making the port of Santa Maria without the loss of a single day. When our prudent Captain insisted that we must call at Porto Grande to coal, I believe that we regarded him as guilty of an offence against our earnestness. The fever of the quest had infected the very firemen in the stoke-hold. My men spent the sunny days peering Northward as though the sea would disclose to them sights and sounds beyond all belief wonderful. They would have burned their beds if by such an act the course had been held.

For my own part, while the zeal flattered me, there were hours of great despondency and, upon that, of silent doubt which no optimism of others could atone for. Reflect how ill-matched were the links in the chain I had forged and how little to be relied upon. A dead man upon a lonely shore; a woman wearing my stolen pearls in a London ball-room; the just belief that diamonds smuggled from the mines of South Africa were hidden upon the high seas; the discovery of a great ship, drifting like a phantom derelict in the waste of the South Atlantic Ocean! This was the record. If I judged that the island of Santa Maria could add to it, the belief was purely supposititious. I went there as a man goes to an address which may help him in a quest. He may find the house empty or tenanted, hostile or friendly; but, in any case, he is wise to go and to answer the question for himself, for no other can take the full measure of that responsibility.

We were delayed awhile at Porto Grande waiting for coal, and after that, sparing our engines as much as possible, we set a drowsy course almost due North, and upon the third day we were within fifty miles of that island of our hopes—Santa Maria in the Azores. I am not likely to forget either the occasion or the circumstance of it. The month was November, the hour eleven o’clock in the forenoon watch, the morning that of Saturday, the nineteenth day of the month. Despite the season of the year, a warm sun shone down upon us almost with tropic heat. Captain Larry was in his cabin preparing for the mid-day observation; the quartermaster Cain was at the wheel; Balaam, the boatswain, sat against the bulwarks amidships, knitting a scarf for his throat; my virile friend, McShanus, had gone below to “soak in the cold water,” as he put it. My own occupation was that of reading for the third time that very beautiful book—Maeterlinck’s “Life of the Bee,” and I was wondering anew at the master knowledge of Nature it displayed when the second officer sent down word from the bridge that he would like to speak with me. Understanding that he did not wish to call the Captain from the cabin, I went up immediately and discovered him not a little excited about a black object drifting with the wind at a distance, it may be, of a third of a mile from the ship. This he pointed out to me, and handing me the glass, he asked me what I made of it.

“It’s a raft, Andrews,” I said—for that was the second officer’s name—“a raft, and there are men upon it.”

“Exactly as I thought, sir. It is a raft, and there are men upon it—but not living men, I fear. I have been watching it for a good ten minutes, and............