recked
mariners whose ship had foundered in lat. 15 deg. N. and long. 25 deg. W., and
then cut the painter and let us go.

"And now I come to the most surprising part of my story, my dear son.
The seamen had hauled the foreyard aback during the rising, but now as
we left them they brought it square again, and, as there was a light
wind from the north and east, the barque began to draw slowly away from
us. Our boat lay, rising and falling, upon the long, smooth rollers, and
Evans and I, who were the most educated of the party, were sitting in
the sheets working out our position and planning what coast we should
make for. It was a nice question, for the Cape de Verds were about 500
miles to the north of us, and the African coast about 700 miles to the
east. On the whole, as the wind was coming round to north, we thought
that Sierra Leone might be best, and turned our head in that direction,
the barque being at that time nearly hull down on our starboard quarter.
Suddenly as we looked at her we saw a dense black cloud of smoke shoot
up from her, which hung like a monstrous tree upon the sky-line. A few
seconds later a roar like thunder burst upon our ears, and as the smoke
thinned away there was no sign left of the _Gloria Scott_. In an instant
we swept the boat's head round again, and pulled with all our strength
for the place where the haze, still trailing over the water, marked the
scene of this catastrophe.

[Illustration: "WE PULLED HIM ABOARD THE BOAT."]

"It was a long hour before we reached it, and at first we feared that we
had come too late to save anyone. A splintered boat and a number of
crates and fragments of spars rising and falling on the waves showed us
where the vessel had foundered, but there was no sign of life, and we
had turned away in despair when we heard a cry for help, and saw at some
distance a piece of wreckage with a man lying stretched across it. When
we pulled him aboard the boat he proved to be a young seaman of the name
of Hudson, who was so burned and exhausted that he could give us no
account of what had happened until the following morning.

"It seemed that after we had left, Prendergast and his gang had
proceeded to put to death the five remaining prisoners: the two warders
had been shot and thrown overboard, and so also had the third mate.
Prendergast then descended into the 'tween decks, and with his own hands
cut the throat of the unfortunate surgeon. There only remained the first