“Ay, here you are, Neb, nigger-like, and not knowing whether to stay or to go,” growled the mate, busy the whole time in shipping two oars.  “You put me in mind of a great singer I once heard in Liverpool; a chap that would keep shaking and quavering at the end of a varse, in such a style that he sometimes did not know whether to let go or to hold on.  It is onbecoming in men to forget themselves, Neb; if we have found him we thought to be lost, it is no reason for desarting our stations, or losing our wits—­Miles, my dear boy,” springing on the raft, and sending Neb adrift again, all alone, by the backward impetus of the leap—­“Miles, my dear boy, God be praised for this!” squeezing both my hands as in a vice—­“I don’t know how it is—­but ever since I ’ve fallen in with my mother and little Kitty, I’ve got to be womanish.  I suppose it’s what you call domestic affection.”

Here, Marble gave in once more, blubbering just as hard as Neb, himself, had done.

A few minutes later, all three began to know what we were about.  The launch was hauled up alongside of the stage, and we sat on the latter, relating the manner in which each of us had been saved.  First, then, as to Neb:  I have already told the mode in which the launch was swept overboard, and I inferred its loss from the violence of the tempest, and the height of the seas that were raging around us.  It is true, neither Marble, nor I, saw anything of the launch after it sunk behind the first hill of water to leeward, for we had too much to attend to on board the ship, to have leisure to look about us.  But, it seems the black was enabled to maintain the boat, the right side up, and, by bailing, to keep her afloat.  He drove to leeward, of course, and the poor fellow described in vivid terms his sensations, as he saw the rate at which he was driving away from the ship, and the manner in which he lost sight of her remaining spars.  As soon as the wind would permit, however, he stepped the masts, and set the two luggs close-reefed, making stretches of three or four miles in length, to windward.  This timely decision was the probable means of saving all our lives.  In the course of a few hours, after he had got the boat under command, he caught a glimpse of the fore-royal-masts sticking out from the cap of a sea, and watching it eagerly, he next perceived the whole of the raft, as it came up on the same swell, with Marble, half-drowned, lashed to the top.  It was quite an hour, before Neb could get near enough to the raft, or spars, to make Marble conscious of his presence, and sometime longer ere he could get the sufferer into the boat.  This rescue did not occur one minute too soon, for the mate admitted to me he was half drowned, and that he did not think he could have held out much longer, when Neb took him into the boat.

As for food and water, they fared well enough.  A breaker of fresh water was kept in each boat, by my standing orders, and it seems that the cook, who was a bit of an epicure in his way, was in the habit of stowing a bag of bread, and certain choice pieces of beef and pork, in the bows of the launch, for his own special benefit.  All these Neb had found, somewhat the worse for salt-water, it is true, but still in a condition to be eaten.  There was sufficient in the launch, therefore, when we thus met, to sustain Marble and Neb, in good heart, for a week.