ess of Sails's judgment and implicitly followed
his directions, dragging the tiller hard up, and at the same time
calling upon the boatswain to ease off the sheet still further. Under
the pressure of her weather helm the boat at once fell broad off; and as
she did so I saw, through the rapidly deepening darkness, a great black
blotch swing into view past the luff of our sail, which the next instant
resolved itself into the shape of a big, hulking brigantine, wallowing
along down toward us with her topsail-yard down on the cap, her reef
tackles bowsed up, and eight men on her yard busily engaged in reefing
her topsail. It was not yet so dark but that those men must have seen
us distinctly--in fact one of them paused in his work to flourish his
hand at us; yet, but for the sailmaker's watchfulness, the craft would
have driven right over us! There could be no doubt of the fact that her
crew had seen us, for, in addition to the man who waved to us from the
yard, there were two men pacing her monkey poop aft who paused in their
march to look at us as we drove past each other; yet, although we yelled
to them frantically to heave-to and pick us up, they made no movement to
do anything of the sort, and ten minutes later the craft vanished in the
darkness. The light was too poor to enable us to read the name on her
stern as she swept past us, but she had all the look of a
Portuguese-built craft; and, justly or unjustly, the Portuguese have
gained rather a sinister reputation for callousness and inhumanity in
their behaviour toward people circumstanced as we were at that moment.

"I s'pose they thinks we're out here in a hopen boat for pleasure and
the fun o' the thing," was the boatswain's sarcastic comment upon their
behaviour, prefaced by a stream of profanity, as the vessel disappeared
from our view.

As soon as we realised that the crew of the brigantine had no intention
of heaving-to and picking us up we again brought the gig to the wind.
But we soon found that this would not do: the wind and sea were both
rapidly becoming too much for us, and to continue fighting against them
meant the speedy swamping or capsizal of the boat. We therefore adopted
the plan which I had been expounding to the boatswain when the
brigantine hove into view, securely lashing the four oars of the boat
together in a bundle, bending the extreme end of our painter to the
middle of the bundle, and launching the whole overboard, at the same
time