With a heavy sigh I beheld this condition of affairs. Parted from the ship, without water or provisions on board, destitute even of a compass, and with night coming on, our situation was indeed piteous in the extreme. How far the squall might carry the ship before outrunning her, it was impossible to conjecture. Perhaps, when the hurricane should be over for our comrades on board, the gallant craft might be hull down on the horizon. In that event, though she would naturally retrace her path to seek us, night might shut in before we could be seen from the mast-head even: and, in the darkness that would follow, nothing could be easier than for her entirely to miss us. Days, in that event, would probably elapse before we would be picked up, if ever. The thought was terrible, and I turned from it, sick at heart, to look for the other boats.
I was not, indeed, without misgivings as to the fate of these. The launch, being large, was better fitted to ride out the gale than her companions, and I expected that the smaller of the two boats, at least, had been swamped. However, I soon discovered both her and her companion, one about a cable’s length astern, and the other nearly abeam. With a glad hallo, that sounded strangely on the now lonely seas, my crew took to their oars, and pulled rapidly in the direction of the boat abeam, the one astern following our example. The first voice I heard was the junior lieutenant’s.
“Can you see any thing of the ship?” he said.
“No,” I replied, “she is entirely out of sight.”
“You have no water or provisions on board, I suppose?”
“Nothing but a beaker of water, and not a solitary biscuit.”
And now I mused for a moment, the crews of the three boats resting on their oars, and looking eagerly at me. Every man knew, as well as myself, that, in all likelihood, we should never see the ship again: in which event a lingering death by starvation was our almost inevitable doom. On my decision, whether to pull after the ship, which would carry us further from land, or, abandoning the hope of meeting the ship, seek to reach the coast by the nearest route, hung, perhaps, our lives: and all were aware of this.
“Follow the squall,” I said, at last, turning my eyes to the dark cloud, now fast disappearing on the eastern horizon, “it is our only chance. If we don’t find the ship we are dead men. It is madness to think of reaching land.”