Overdue | Page 3

chasing each other fore and aft, and dodging round their
elders in their play, filling the rich, sweet, morning air with the music
of their voices. There was a soft, seething sound over the side as the
ship slid gently along, accompanied by a constant iridescent gleam and
flash of the tiny bubbles that slipped along the bends and vanished at
last in the smooth, oil-like wake with its tiny whirlpools; and at
frequent intervals a shoal of flying-fish would spark out from under the
bows and go skimming and glittering away to port or starboard, like a
shower of brand-new silver dollars hove broadcast by the hand of old
Father Neptune himself. The cuddy breakfast was fairly under way, and
a great clattering of cups and saucers, knives and forks, and the hum of
lively conversation, accompanied by sundry savoury odours, came
floating up through the open skylights, when the chief mate's eye
happened to be attracted toward a gasket, streaming loose like an Irish
pennant from the fore topgallant yard, and he sang out to one of the
ordinary seamen to jump aloft and put it right. The fellow made his
way up the ratlines with extreme deliberation--for, indeed, a journey
aloft in such scorching heat was no joke--made up the loose gasket, and
was in the very act of swinging himself off the yard when, happening to
be watching him, I saw him suddenly pause and stiffen into an attitude
of attention as, holding on to the jackstay with one hand, he flung the
other up to his forehead and peered ahead under the sharp of it. For a
full minute he stood thus; then, twisting his body until he faced aft, he
hailed:
"On deck there!"
"Hillo!" answered the mate.
"There's a biggish ship away out yonder, sir," reported the man, "under
her three taups'ls and fore topmast staysail; and by the way that she
comes to and falls off again I'd say that she was hove-to."
"How far off is she?" demanded the mate.
"'Bout a dozen mile, I reckon, sir," answered the man.

"Um!" remarked the mate, as much to himself as to me, it seemed. "She
is probably a whaler on the lookout for `fish'. I believe they sometimes
meet with rare streaks of luck just about here. All right," he added,
hailing the man aloft; "you can come down."
Shortly afterward we made out the stranger's upper spars from the deck;
and from the rapidity with which we raised them it soon became
apparent that, if she had really been hove-to when first seen, she had
soon filled away, and was now standing in our direction. By five bells
she was hull-up; and while the skipper and mate were standing together
eyeing her from the break of the poop--the latter with the ship's
telescope at his eye--I saw the ensign of the stranger float out over her
rail and go creeping up to her gaff-end.
"There goes her ensign, sir," I shouted to the mate, who responded by
remarking dryly:
"Yes; I see it." Then, turning to the skipper, he said:
"There's something wrong aboard that craft, sir; they've just hoisted
their ensign, jack downward!" This, it may be explained to the
uninitiated, is a signal of distress.
"The dickens they have!" exclaimed the skipper. "Just let me have a
look at her, Mr Bryce."
The mate handed over the telescope, and the skipper raised it to his eye,
adjusting the focus to his sight.
"Ay, you are quite right," he agreed, with his eye still peering through
the tube. "The jack's downward, right enough. Wonder what's wrong
aboard of her? her hull and spars seem to be all right, and I don't see
any water pouring from her scuppers, as there would be if she had
sprung a leak and the hands were working at the pumps. Well, we shall
soon know, I suppose. Let our own ensign be hoisted in
acknowledgment, Mr Bryce."
"Ay, ay, sir," answered the mate. "Troubridge,"--to me--"jump aft and

run our ensign up to the peak, will ye?"
I went aft to the flag locker, drew out the big ensign, bent it on to the
halyards, and ran it up to the gaff-end, where there was just wind
enough to blow it out and make it distinguishable for what it was.
The news that the stranger in sight was flying a signal of distress soon
spread among the passengers, and in a few minutes every telescope in
the cuddy was upon the poop and being eagerly focused upon the
approaching vessel, which had by this time revealed herself as a
full-rigged ship of some 800 tons measurement, of wholesome,
motherly build, but certainly not a whaler, as could be seen by the
model of the boats which she