And the little boat!--I
broke that rail as I was getting poor Andrew's body on board. She is all
right, but for that--and she's for sale!"
In an hour, having concocted some stew and baked his damper, the
single-handed nerve-shaken, old sailor set sail, and I knew him no more.
Another of poor old "Yorky's" adventures is worth telling. While out on
the Barrier Reef, the black crew of his beche-de-mer boat mutinied, and
knocking him and his mate on the head, threw them overboard. The sudden
souse into the water restored "Yorky" to consciousness, and he swam
back to the cutter whence the blacks had hastily fled in the dingy. It
was a desperate struggle for a one-armed man to cling to and clamber up
the side of the boat, but "Yorky" has never yet failed when his life
was at stake. He won the deck at last, but at the expense of a broken
rib and the flesh on the best part of his side tom bare to the bones.
Still dazed, he chanced to look over the side, where he saw his mate's
head bobbing up and down in the water. Hard as it had been for him to
save himself, it was more difficult still to rescue the body from the
sharks. Frantically using rough-and-ready methods, he hauled it on
board, and disposed it as decently as circumstances permitted.
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