“For heaven’s sake!” continued the captain, “let’s look about—she must surely have had boats out, or something, Mr Aldridge? The best thing we can do is to fire a few times as we bear down—see that bow-gun cleared away, Mr Moore, and do it!” We might have been about a mile, as was guessed, from where she was last seen, when the brig fired a gun to windward, still standing on under everything. At the second flash that lighted up the belly of the clouds, with the black glitter of the swells below them, I fancied I caught a moment’s glimpse of something two or three miles away. It was too short to say, however; and soon after the twinkle of a light, seemingly hoisted on a spar, was seen little more than half a mile upon the brig’s lee-bow, dipping and going out of sight at times, but plain enough when it rose. Down went the Podargus for the spot, sending the foam off her cut-water; and it was no long time before a wild hail from several voices could be made out almost close aboard. Ten minutes after she was brought to the wind, heaving a rope to the men on a loose raft of casks and spars, as it pitched alongside of her, with the sail hauled down on a spar they had stuck up, and a lantern at the head of it; after which the raft was cast off, and the poor fellows were safe on board. Two of them seemed to be half-drowned, the one wrapped up in a wet pilot-coat, his face looking white and frightened enough by the glimmer of the lanterns; the other darker a good deal, so far as I could make him out for the crowd about him, and he didn’t seem able to speak; accordingly, both of them were taken at once below to the surgeon. The rest were four half-naked blacks, and a little chap with ear-rings and a seaman’s dress, who was the spokesman on the quarterdeck to the captain’s questions—plainly American by his snuffling sort of drawl. “Are there no more of you afloat?” was the first thing asked, to which the Yankee sailor shook his head. She was an American bark, he said, from a voyage of discovery round the two Capes; he was mate himself, and the skipper, being addicted to his cups, had set a cask of rum on fire; so, finding they couldn’t get it under, besides being wearied at the pumps, on account of an old leak, the men broke into the spirit-room and got dead drunk. He and the blacks had patched up a raft in a hurry for bare life, barely saving the passenger and his servant who had jumped overboard: the passenger was a learned sort of a man, he said, and his servant was a Mexican. Most of this I found next day, from the gun-room officers: however, I heard the mate of the burnt barque inquire of the captain whereabouts they were, as the skipper was the only man who could use a chronometer or quadrant, and the last gale had driven them out of their reckonings a long way. “Somehow south of the Line, I guess?” said he; but, on being told, the fellow gave a bewildered glance round him, seemingly, and a cunning kind of squint after it, as I fancied. “Well,”