Within another hour, she luffed up a grinning negro foremast, a grinning negro foremast had cast the lifeboat a line; Juan Lopez caught and made this fast while Philip struck the leg of mutton sail. Then, the schooner swung back to its course, the small boat slipping in under its quarter and the cast a way clambering aboard.
The crew had mustered to a man to witness the rescue. A small, blithe, weather-brushed New Englander was the first to welcome the astaways. Introducing himself as the skipper, Captain Hoode, and his mate, a hulking Nova Scotian with a face like a death-mask in brownish putty, as Mr. Nicholas showed them the foremast hands hovered, murmuring sympathetically, some half a dozen of them, including the negro who had cast the line to Juan Lopez.
Despite the protestations of the three that their sufferings had been nothing unendurable, they were conducted below with kindly insistence, plied with food and drink till they could swallow no more, then assigned to comfortable quarters—the skipper all the while gently but firmly insisting they must not waste their strength in explanations of their plight, something which, he declared, could wait till they had slept and fenewed their strength. Submitting perforce to his well-meant exercise of authority, they turned in gratefully—and each on the instant subsided into slumbers profoundly lethargic. And no wonder... 