It was a fight every inch of the way, but at last they reached the bow
and found the sailors bending over the recumbent form of a youth.
“What has happened? What did we strike?” asked Jack of one of the
sailors.
“Struck a small boat,” was the reply. “How it ever lived in this sea is
a wonder. This fellow was in it.”
“Is he all right?”
“No; about half dead,” rejoined the third mate. “Carry him aft, men, and
put him in one of the spare cabins. With care he may pull through. I’m
going to notify the captain,” and he hurried off.
Several men picked up the form of the rescued one. Jack suddenly saw his
face, pale as death, with his wet hair hanging over his forehead.
“Great guns, Billy!” he gasped.
“What is it? What’s the matter? Do you know him?” queried Raynor.
“Know him? I should say so. So do you. It’s Harvey Thurman.”
“Impossible.”
“Not at all. Take a look at him yourself.”
“By George, you are right. What a strange happening,” declared Raynor,
after taking one glance at the youth the crew were bearing off.
“What in the world can he be doing in this part of the ocean in a small
boat?” wondered Jack.
“I’ve no idea. We’ll have to wait till he comes to, if he ever does. I
remember hearing now that he had got a job on a Pacific steamer. Perhaps
it had been wrecked and he was a castaway.”
“Possibly,” agreed Jack. “I’m glad we saved him, although he has made a
lot of trouble for us in the past.”
As readers of “The Ocean Wireless Boys and the Naval Code” will recall,
it was Harvey Thurman who was assistant wireless man on the _Columbia_
and whose dislike of Jack and Billy resulted in his joining their
enemies in an effort to discredit them. After the stolen code was
recovered, Thurman was not, like the rest engaged in the rascally
business, sent to prison, but was allowed to go free at the boys’
behest, as they believed he had been badly influenced more than anything
else.
“So you know him?” said Captain Sparhawk, as they all stood in the cabin
to which Thurman had been taken and restoratives were administered to
the unfortunate youth.
“Indeed we do,” said both boys, and they told the captain something of
their experiences.
“He is not a desirable character then?” said the captain.
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Jack. “We thought he was influenced by bad
companions. But at any rate he had no liking for us. Is he going to get
better?”
“I think so. See, he is opening his eyes.”
Thurman’s face, under the influence of the restoratives, had become
suffused by a faint flush of color. He looked wildly about him. As his
gaze rested first on Jack and then on Raynor he looked like a sleeper
newly awakened from a night-mare.
“Gracious, am I dreaming?” he gasped.
“No, my lad,” said the captain, “but you had a close call from going
into a sleep from which you never would have awakened.”
“But Ready and Raynor! What are they doing here?”
“Oh, we’re solid enough. Nothing ghostly about us,” Jack assured him,
extending his hand. “Congratulations on your narrow escape from death,
and—and we’ll let bygones be bygones.”
“I never meant to be really bad,” said Thurman weakly.
“Say no more about it,” advised Billy. “But tell us how you came to be
adrift in such a fearful storm in that dinky little boat.”
“Better let him eat some soup first,” said the captain, taking a
steaming bowl from the steward, from whom he had ordered it for the
relief of the castaway, “he’s half starved.”
The way in which Thurman gulped down the grateful food showed that this
statement was no exaggeration.
“That’s the first food I’ve had in two days,” he declared. “You see,
when the _Galilee_, that was the schooner I was on board of, sank in the
storm some days ago, I escaped in the boat. We launched two altogether,
but I guess the other one was lost.”
“Begin at the beginning,” suggested Jack.
“All right then. It was this way, Ready: After my—er—my little trouble
with you I came west. I got a job as assistant wireless man at a lonely
station on one of the Caroline Islands. But I couldn’t stand the life
and resigned. No regular steamers touch there, so I got passage on the
_Galilee_, a little trading schooner for Papeiti. She sprang a leak and
sank, and there was only a loaf of bread and a few cans of meat in the
boat when I shoved off from the sinking hulk. It was all I had time to
put in. What happened after that till you bumped into me and saved me is
like a bad dream. I guess I was crazy most of the time. I never expected
to be saved, and—and I guess it has been a good lesson to me.”
“If it has made you resolve to reform, it will not have been wasted,”
said Jack. And he then told Thurman something about themselves. Captain
Sparhawk promised that as soon as Thurman was stronger he would find a
job for him, for the boys’ old enemy was penniless, having left his
wallet behind him in his haste at fleeing from the sinking schooner.
All that night the tempest raged with unabated fury. At times it seemed
as if the yacht must go to pieces, so sadly was she wrenched and
buffeted by the giant combers. There was little sleep for any on board
that night and the day broke wildly on a worried, harried-looking crew.
Shortly before noon the foresail tore away from the bolt ropes, and
split with a noise like the explosion of a cannon. This accident was
almost immediately followed by a shout from the lookout.
“Land, ho!”
This cry, ordinarily one hailed with delight by sailors, was not thus
received on the _Sea Gypsy_. Captain Sparhawk had been unable to get an
observation during the days of storm, and what with this, and the heavy
lee drift made by the yacht, he had no idea of his whereabouts.
At the shout all hands clambered to points of vantage to see what
islands they could be approaching. As the _Sea Gypsy_ rose dizzily on
the top of a great wave Jack saw, with a flash of alarm, that they were
headed straight for a large island dotted with tropical verdure and
tall, wind-bent palms about which rocks bristled menacingly like hungry
fangs awaiting to penetrate the _Sea Gypsy’s_ stout hull.