The Ocean Waifs, by Captain Mayne Reid.
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This is a fairly remarkable book. The scene opens with several small
vessels drifting about on the ocean. There had been a fire, followed
by an explosion aboard a vessel carrying slaves. Most of the crew were
pretty nasty people, but there were two pairs of people who become the
heroes of this story. One of these is Ben Brace and a sixteen year old
boy seaman, whom he had rescued from being eaten by the thirty or so
crew members who had found enough spars, timber, sails, ropes and
barrels to construct a large raft, though rather badly made, because
these men were consoling themselves with a rum-barrel. At a distance
floated the ship's gig, with the captain, the mate, the carpenter and
three other men. Finally, there is a construction, hardly more than a
large barrel, containing Snowball, an African ship's cook of the
Coromantee tribe, together with a little girl of eight or ten. Luckily
these get together with Ben Brace and the boy William, and it is their
adventures that the story is mainly about. The author is a natural
historian, and he tells us lots of interesting things about the fish
and other denizens of the deep. Naturally the whole thing comes right
in the end, with the wicked perishing, and the good being picked up
by a whale-ship.
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THE OCEAN WAIFS, BY CAPTAIN MAYNE REID.