This page has been validated.
158
The Clipper Ship Era

turns the sea into a lake of fire; and we feel the benediction of the cool twilight and whispering breeze.

In the silence of the night, the two men, weak from loss of blood, drag themselves aft to the deserted cabin; Johnson lowers himself down the companion and gropes his way to the pantry, where he finds food to share with his companion. In the captain's cabin he finds a decanter of brandy and a tumbler in the rack at the foot of the berth; he fills the glass and pours the spirit down his parched throat to brace his shattered nerves, then fills the glass again and takes it to the serang, but the faithful follower of Mahomet refuses to lift it to his burning lips. We live with them as they work their little vessel back to the muddy waters of the Hooghly and sight a pilot brig lying at anchor on her station, and their joy is ours when the pilot, with his leadsman, servant, and boat's crew, comes on board. Again these unfortunate men, haggard and still suffering from their wounds, are being tried in an Anglo-Indian Court of Justice under a charge of murder on the high seas, and we hear the judge pronounce their solemn sentence of death.

The scenes to which I have referred were so real that it seemed as if Johnson, while describing them, must have believed this story himself, and it was interesting to note the effect upon those who heard it for the first time, when, after giving a circumstantial account of the miraculous escape of the serang and himself from the Calcutta prison during the night before they were to be hanged, he would