Page:Dick Sands the Boy Captain.djvu/54

 40 DICK SANDS, THE BOY CAPTAIN. January, after paying theîr passage in the ordînary way, they embarked at Melbourne on board the "Waldeck." Everything went on well for seventeen days, until, on the night of the 22nd, which was very dark, they were run into by a great steamer. They were ail asleep in their berths, but, roused by the shock of the collision, which was ex- tremely severe, they hurriedly made their way on to the deck. The scène was terrible ; both masts were gone, and the brig, although the watcr had not absolutely flooded her hold so as to make her sink, had completely heeled over on her side. Captain and crew had entirely disappeared, some probably having been dashed into the sea, others perhaps having saved themselves by clinging to the rigging of the ship which had fouled them, and which could be dis- tinguished through the darkness rapidly receding in the distance. For a while they were paralyzed, but they soon awoke to the conviction that they were left alone upon a half-capsized and disabled hull, twelve hundred miles from the ncarest land. Mrs. Weldon was loud in her expression of indignation that any captain should hâve the barbarity to abandon an unfortunate vessel with which his own carelessness had brought him into collision. It would be bad enough, she said for a driver on a public road, when it might be pre- sumed that help would be forthcoming, to pass on uncon- cerned after causing an accident to another vehicle ; but how much more shameful to désert the injured on the open sea, where the victims of his incompétence could hâve no chance of obtaining succour! Captain Hull could only repeat what he had said before, that incrcdibly atrocious as it might scem, such inhumanity was far from rare. On resuming his story, Tom said that he and his com- panions soon found that they had no means left for getting away from the capsized brig; both the boats had been crushed in the collision, so that they had no alternative except to await the appearance of a passing vessel, whilst the wreck was drifting hopelessly along under the action of the currents. This accounted for the fact of their being found so far south of their proper course.