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as light enough upon the water to have revealed the boats at a distance of half-a-mile, while the weather was so fine that a shout raised at twice that distance to windward of the ship might have been heard on board her above the soft sigh of the night wind, and the gentle lap of the water along the bends; moreover, apart from the rockets fired, she might have been plainly seen against the sky at a distance of fully three miles from the boats, while her progress through the water was so slow that they could have pulled alongside her without difficulty; when, therefore, midnight arrived without any news of them, I gave them up for lost, and turned in. Not so Mendouca, he would not give them up; moreover, he refused to leave the deck--declaring that now he had lost his two mates he had nobody on board that he could trust in charge--preferring to have a mattress laid for him upon the skylight bench, where he snatched catnaps between the intervals of wearing the ship round. However, the matter was cleared up shortly after sunrise next morning, when Mendouca again sent a hand aloft to look round, for the fellow had only got as far as the foretop when he reported two objects that looked like the boats, about five miles to leeward; adding, that if they _were_ the boats, they were capsized. The topsail was accordingly filled, and the ship kept away, when, after about an hour's run, first one boat and then the other was found, the first being capsized, while the second was full of water and floating with the gunwale awash. One drowned seaman was found under the capsized boat, but the rest were nowhere to be seen. Both boats were easily secured, and found to be undamaged; and several of the oars and loose bottom-boards were also recovered, being found floating at no great distance from the boats. The drowned seaman, I may as well mention, was not brought on board, but instead of this a boat was sent away with a canvas bag containing three nine-pound shot, which they secured to the poor wretch's ankles, and so sunk him. Mendouca now, in no very amiable mood, resumed his course toward the coast; and that same afternoon--having meanwhile been engaged apparently in a tolerably successful effort to recover his temper--approached me with a proposal that he should tell me the story of his life, to which I of course cheerfully assented. I will not inflict upon the reader the tale that he told me, because it has no direct bearing
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