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