It was a desert, sandy coast, and they were almost starved after having reached the land; their only shelter was a small cave in a low ledge of rocks near the beach; they fed upon half-putrid shell-fish thrown upon the sands by the gale, and they drank from the pools of rain-water that had formed on the rock during the storm; for they had saved nothing from the wreck but a sealed bottle, containing their protections as American sailors, some money in an old glove, and a few other papers. William Stanley had been ill before the gale, and he had not strength to bear up against these hardships; he declined rapidly, and aware that he could not live, the young man charged his companion, if he ever returned to America, to seek his family, relate the circumstances of his death, and show the papers in the bottle--an old letter to himself, and within it the notice of his father's marriage, which he had cut from a paper, obtained from an American vessel spoken on the voyage--and also the package left on shore in the old chest, as these documents would be considered testimonials of his veracity. He farther charged Stebbins to say that he asked his father's forgiveness, acknowledging that he died repenting of his past misconduct. The third day after the gale the young man expired, and Stebbins buried him in the sand near the cave. The survivor had a hard struggle for life; the rain-water had soon dried away, and he set out at night in search of a spring to relieve his thirst, still keeping in sight of the shore. As the morning sun rose, when all but exhausted, he discovered on the beach several objects from the wreck, which had drifted in that direction, the wind having changed after the gale. He found a keg of spirits and some half-spoiled biscuit, and by these means his life was prolonged. He made a bag of his shirt, bound a few things on his back, and buried others in the sand, to return to if necessary, and then continued to follow the shore northward, in search of some spring or stream. Fortunately, he soon came to a woody tract which promised water, and climbing a tree he watched the wild animals, hoping to discover where they drank; at length, following a flock of antelopes, he came suddenly upon the bank of a stream of some size; and to his unspeakable joy, saw on the opposite bank a party of white men, the first human beings he had beheld since Stanley's death; they proved to be Swedes belonging to a ship in the offing; and immediately took him into their boat. The vessel was bound to Stockholm, where she carried young Stanley's shipmate; from there he went to St. Petersburgh, where he met with the brother who related his story to Hazlehurst, and both soon after enlisted in the Russian navy.
They were sent to the Black Sea, and kept there and in the Mediterranean for five years, until the elder brother, Jonathan Stebbins, died of small-pox in a hospital at Marseilles, having never returned to America since the wreck of the Jefferson.
Before his death, however, he left all his effects and William Stanley's papers to his brother. This man, Robert Stebbins, seemed to have paid very little attention to the documents; it was by mere chance that he preserved the old letter, and the marriage notice within it, for he confessed that he had torn up the protection, once when he wanted a bit of paper: he had never known William Stanley himself, the inquiries about the young man had ceased before he returned to America, and he had attached no importance whatever to these papers. He had left them where they had first been placed, in the old sea-chest at his mother's house, near New Bedford, while he led the usual wandering life of a sailor. He told Harry that he had at last quite forgotten this package, until he accidentally fell in with a man calling himself William Stanley, at a low tavern, only some five or six years since, and, to his amazement, heard him declare he had been wrecked in the Jefferson.
{"protection" = a paper testifying to the American citizenship of a seaman, carried to protect him against being forced into the British Navy as an Englishman. Stebbins' survival reflects descriptions of a shipwreck on the Atlantic coast of North Africa in James Fenimore Cooper's "Homeward Bound" (1838)}
"The fellow was half-drunk," said Stebbins; "but I knew his yarn was a lie all the time, for I had sailed with him in another ship, at the time my brother Jonathan was wrecked in the Jefferson. He shipped then under the name of Benson, but I knew his real name was Edward Hopgood--"
