Sailors have their virtues and vices like other men, but I am not arrogating for them when I say, that a scene like this, in all its appalling bearings; that misery, such as we saw before us, so peculiarly incidental to his own condition, would, were it from this cause alone, thrill to a sailor's heart, with a force unknown and undreamt of by any other human being. Dogvane, the old quartermaster, had steered us on board. He now jumped up in the stern sheets, and cast off his jacket--"You, Jabos, you limber villain," said he to a slight boy who pulled the foremost oar, "come out of the bow, and take the tiller, will ye? and mind you steer steady. Shift forward, my hearties, and give me the stroke oar." The boat's crew at this hint tore their hats off, with a chance of a stroke of the sun before their eyes, and dashed them to the bottom of the boat, stripped up their frock sleeves to their armpits, undid the ribbons that fastened their frock collars, new-fitted their stretchers, and wetting the palms of their hands, feathered their oars, and waited for the word. "Now mind your strain, my lads," again sung out old Dogvane, "until the boat gathers way--no springing of the ash staves, do you hear? Give way now." The boat started off like an arrow--the oars groaned and cheeped, the water buzzed away into a long snow-white frothy wake, and in _no time_ she was alongside the felucca, on whose deck, in his red-hot haste, the quartermaster first toppled down on his nose, and then, scarcely taking time to touch his hat to Mr Lanyard, we saw him bundle down the main hatchway; in another moment a small cask, ready slung, slowly ascended, and was rolled across the deck into the boat. But this was not all; the Midges on board the felucca were instantly all astir, and buzzing about at a devil of a rate--out sweeps was the word, and there was the black hull of the little vessel torn along the shining surface of the calm sea, right in the wake of the boat, by twelve long dark sweeps, looking for all the world, in the distance, like a beetle chasing a common fly across a polished mirror blazing with intolerable radiance under the noon-dav sun. It appeared that, first of all, the brig had been a long time baffled in the Horse latitudes, which ran their supply of water short; and, latterly, they had lain a whole week becalmed where we found them. Several days before we fell in with them, they had sent away the boat with three hands to try and reach the shore, and bring back a supply, but they had never returned, having in all likelihood either perished from thirst before they got to land, or missed the brig on their way back. No soul on board, neither captain nor crew, had cooled his parched tongue for eight-and-forty hours before we boarded them--_this in such a climate_!