"So Andy he come up, so fagged out that it was as much as he could do to get his clothes on, though they wasn't much, an' then he stretched himself out under the canvas an' went to sleep, an' it wasn't long afore he was talkin' about roast turkey an' cranberry sass, an' punkin-pie, an' sech stuff, most of which we knowed was under our feet that present minnit. Tom Simmons he just b'iled over, an' sung out: `Roll him out in the sun an' let him cook! I can't stand no more of this!' But I wasn't goin' to have Andy treated no sech way as that, fur if it hadn't been fur Tom Simmons' wife an' young uns, Andy'd been worth two of him to anybody who was consid'rin' savin' life. But I give the boy a good punch in the ribs to stop his dreamin', fur I was as hungry as Tom was, an' couldn't stand no nonsense about Christmas dinners.
"It was a little arter noon when Andy woke up, an' he went outside to stretch himself. In about a minute he give a yell that made Tom an' me jump. `A sail!' he hollered. `A sail!' An' you may bet your life, young man, that 'twasn't more'n half a second afore us two had scuffled out from under that canvas, an' was standin' by Andy. `There she is!' he shouted, `not a mile to win'ard.' I give one look, an' then I sings out: `'Tain't a sail! It's a flag of distress! Can't you see, you land-lubber, that that's the Stars and Stripes upside down?' `Why, so it is,' says Andy, with a couple of reefs in the joyfulness of his voice. An' Tom he began to growl as if somebody had cheated him out of half a year's wages.
"The flag that we saw was on the hull of a steamer that had been driftin' down on us while we was sittin' under our canvas.
It was plain to see she'd been caught in the typhoon, too, fur there wasn't a mast or a smoke-stack on her. But her hull was high enough out of the water to catch what wind there was, while we was so low sunk that we didn't make no way at all. There was people aboard, and they saw us, an' waved their hats an' arms, an' Andy an' me waved ours; but all we could do was to wait till they drifted nearer, fur we hadn't no boats to go to 'em if we'd wanted to.
"`I'd like to know what good that old hulk is to us,' says Tom Simmons. `She can't take us off.' It did look to me somethin' like the blind leadin' the blind. But Andy he sings out: `We'd be better off aboard of her, fur she ain't water-logged, an', more'n that, I don't s'pose her stores are all soaked up in salt water.' There was some sense in that, an' when the steamer had got to within half a mile of us, we was glad to see a boat put out from her with three men in it. It was a queer boat, very low an' flat, an' not like any ship's boat I ever see.
But the two fellers at the oars pulled stiddy, an' pretty soon the boat was 'longside of us, an' the three men on our deck. One of 'em was the first mate of the other wreck, an' when he found out what was the matter with us, he spun his yarn, which was a longer one than ours. His vessel was the Water Crescent, nine hundred tons, from 'Frisco to Melbourne, an' they had sailed about six weeks afore we did. They was about two weeks out when some of their machinery broke down, an' when they got it patched up it broke ag'in, worse than afore, so that they couldn't do nothin' with it. They kep' along under sail for about a month, makin' mighty poor headway till the typhoon struck 'em, an' that cleaned their decks off about as slick as it did ours, but their hatches wasn't blowed off, an' they didn't ship no water wuth mentionin', an' the crew havin' kep' below, none of 'em was lost. But now they was clean out of provisions an' water, havin' been short when the breakdown happened, fur they had sold all the stores they could spare to a French brig in distress that they overhauled when about a week out. When they sighted us they felt pretty sure they'd git some provisions out of us. But when I told the mate what a fix we was in his jaw dropped till his face was as long as one of Andy's hands.
Howsomdever, he said he'd send the boat back fur as many men as it could bring over, an' see if they couldn't git up some of our stores. Even if they was soaked with salt water, they'd be better than nothin'. Part of the cargo of the Water Crescent was tools an, things fur some railway contractors out in Australier, an' the mate told the men to bring over some of them irons that might be used to fish out the stores. All their ship's boats had been blowed away, an' the one they had was a kind of shore boat for fresh water, that had been shipped as part of the cargo, an' stowed below. It couldn't stand no kind of a sea, but there wasn't nothin' but a swell on, an' when it come back it had the cap'n in it, an' five men, besides a lot of chains an' tools.
"Them fellers an' us worked pretty nigh the rest of the day, an' we got out a couple of bar'ls of water, which was all right, havin' been tight bunged, an' a lot of sea-biscuit, all soaked an sloppy, but we only got a half-bar'l of meat, though three or four of the men stripped an' dove fur more'n an hour.
We cut up some of the meat an' eat it raw, an' the cap'n sent some over to the other wreck, which had drifted past us to leeward, an' would have gone clean away from us if the cap'n hadn't had a line got out an' made us fast to it while we was a-workin' at the stores.
"That night the cap'n took us three, as well as the provisions we'd got out, on board his hull, where the 'commodations was consid'able better than they was on the half-sunk Mary Auguster. An' afore we turned in he took me aft an' had a talk with me as commandin' off'cer of my vessel. `That wreck o' yourn,' says he, `has got a vallyble cargo in it, which isn't sp'iled by bein' under water. Now, if you could get that cargo into port it would put a lot of money in your pocket, fur the owners couldn't git out of payin' you fur takin' charge of it an' havin' it brung in. Now I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll lie by you, an' I've got carpenters aboard that'll put your pumps in order, an' I'll set my men to work to pump out your vessel.
