The quest of the Silver Swan: A land and sea tale for boys — A Closer Reading

gular objects, dark in color, and looking like tiny sails, darting along the surface of the sea, first in this direction and then in that. There was a peculiar sinister motion to these fleshy sails, an appearance to make the beholder shudder involuntarily; for these objects were the dorsal fins of sharks, and there is nothing more bloodthirsty and cruel than these “tigers of the sea.”

It was quite noticeable that these monsters had gathered about an object which, in comparison with the vast expanse of sea and sky, was but a speck. It labored heavily upon the surface of the sea, and seemed to possess a great attraction for the sharks.

It was really a heavily built raft, more than twenty feet in length, and with a short, stumpy mast lashed upright amidships. Near each end was a long sea chest, both placed across the raft, and there were also a broken water butt and several empty cracker boxes lashed firmly (as were the chests) to the strongly built platform.

At one end of this ungainly craft, behind one of the chests, lay two men; at the further side of the opposite chest reclined another.

One might have thought the sea chests to be fortifications, for all three men were heavily armed, and each was extremely careful not to expose his person to the party behind the opposite chest.

Between the two boxes lay the figure of a fourth man; but he was flat upon his face with his arms spread out in a most unnatural attitude. He was evidently dead.

Of the two men who were at the forward end of the raft (or what was the forward end for the time being, the ocean currents having carried the craft in various directions during the several past days), of these two, I say, one was a person of imposing, if not handsome, presence, with curling brown hair streaked with gray, finely chiseled features, and skin bronzed by wind and weather; but now the features were most painfully emaciated, and a blood stained bandage was wrapped about his brow.

His companion was a hearty looking old sea dog, well past the half century mark, but who had evidently stood the privations they had undergone far better than the first named.

He was burned even darker than the other, was of massive figure and leonine head, and possessed a hand like a ham. One leg was bent up beneath him, but the other was stretched out stiffly, and it took only a casual glance to see that the old seaman had a wooden leg.

Every few moments the latter individual raised his head carefully and peered over the chest, thus keeping a sharp watch on the movements of the single occupant of the space behind the other fortification.

This person was a broad shouldered, deep chested man, seemingly quite as powerful as the wooden legged sailor. Privation and hardship had not improved his appearance, either, for his raven black beard and hair were matted and unkempt, and his bronzed face had that peculiar, pinched expression with which starvation marks its victims; and this look did not make his naturally villainous features less brutal.

In truth, all three of these unfortunates were starving to death; the fourth man, who lay so still upon the rough boards between the two chests, was the first victim of the hardships they had suffered for the last ten days.

These four men had been members of the ship’s company of the good brig Silver Swan, bound to Boston from Cape Town and Rio Janeiro. After leaving the latter port three weeks before, several severe storms had arisen and the brig was beaten terrifically by the elements for days and days.

Finally, after having every stick wrenched from her and even the jury mast the crew had rigged, stripped bare, the brig, now being totally unmanageable, was blown upon a narrow and barren reef several leagues to the south and west of Cuba.

The crew, who had ere this most faithfully obeyed the captain and mate, Caleb Wetherbee, now believing the vessel about to go to pieces, madly rushed to the boats, and lowering them into the heavy sea, lost their lives in their attempt to leave the brig.

Captain Tarr and mate Wetherbee were able to save only two of the unfortunates--Paulo Montez, a Brazilian, and Jim Leroyd, the latter the least worthy of all the crew.

These four had built the rude raft upon which they had now floated so long, and not daring to remain with the brig during another storm that seemed imminent, they set sail in the lumbering craft and left the well built and still seaworthy brig hard and fast upon the reef.