'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 cutwater; 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 earrings and a seaman's dress who was the spokesman on the quarter-deck to the captain's questions--plainly American by his snuffling sort of drawl.