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<h3>Chapter Forty.</h3> <h4>Launching the Life-Preserver.</h4> It is scarce necessary to say that, during all this time. Little William, on board the Catamaran, was half wild with anxious thoughts. He had obeyed the first instructions shouted to him by Ben Brace, and taken to the steering-oar; but, after struggling for some time to get the craft round, and seeing that his efforts were of no avail, he dropped it to comply with the still later orders given by the sailor: to let loose the halliards and lower the sail. Ben had wondered, and with a slight feeling of chagrin, why this last order had not been executed,—at least more promptly,—for at a later period he knew the sail had been lowered; but Ben was of course ignorant of the cause of the delay. His conjecture, however, afterwards expressed, when he half-remembered having put “a ugly knot on the haulyards”; which he, little William, “maybe warn’t able to get clear as fast as mout a been wished,” was perfectly correct; as was also the additional hypothesis that the sail had been got down at last, “either by loosin’ the belay or cuttin’ the piece o’ rope.” The latter was in reality the mode by which the sailor-lad had succeeded in lowering the sail. As Ben had conjectured, the belaying loop had proved too much for the strength of William’s fingers; and, after several fruitless efforts to untie the knot, he had at length given it up, and, seizing the axe, had severed the halliard by cutting it through and through. Of course the sail came down upon the instant; but it was then too late; and when William again looked out over the ocean, he saw only the ocean itself, with neither spot nor speck to break the uniformity of its boundless bosom of blue. In that glance he perceived that he was alone,—he felt for the first time that he was alone upon the ocean! The thought was sufficient to beget despair,—to paralyse him against all further action; and, had he been a boy of the ordinary stamp, such might have been the result. But he was not one of this kind. The spirit which had first impelled him to seek adventure by sea, proved a mind moulded for enterprise and action. It was not the sort of spirit to yield easily to despair; nor did it then. Instead of resigning himself up to fate or chance, he continued to exert the powers both of his mind and body, in the hope that something might still be done to retrieve the misfortune which had befallen the crew of the Catamaran. He again returned to the steering-oar; and, hastily detaching it from the hook upon which it had been mounted as a rudder, he commenced using it as a paddle, and endeavoured to propel the raft against the wind. It is scarce necessary to say that he employed all his strength in the effort; but, notwithstanding this, he soon became convinced that he was employing it in vain. The huge Catamaran lay just as Snowball had characteristically described her,—“like a log o’ ’hogany wood in a calm ob de tropic.” Even worse than this; for, paddle as he would, the sailor-lad soon perceived that the raft, instead of making way against the wind, or even holding its ground, still continued to drift rapidly to leeward. At this crisis another idea occurred to him. It might have occurred sooner, had his mind not been monopolised with the hope of being able to row the raft to windward. Failing in this, however, his next idea was to throw something overboard,—something that might afford a support to the swimmers struggling in the water. The first object that came under his eyes promising such rapport was the sea-kit of the sailor. As already stated, it was amidships,—where its owner had been exploring it. The lid was open, and little William perceived that it was wellnigh empty; since its contents could be seen scattered on all sides, just as the sailor had rummaged them out, forming a paraphernalia of sufficient variety and extent to have furnished the forecastle of a frigate. The sight of the chest, with its painted canvas covering, which Little William knew to be water-tight, was suggestive. With the lid locked down, it might act as a buoy, and serve for a life-preserver. At all events, no better appeared to offer itself; and, without further hesitation, the lad slammed down the lid, which fortunately had the trick of locking itself with a spring, and, seizing the chest by one of the sennit handles, he dragged it to the edge of the raft, gave it a final push, and launched it overboard into the blue water of the ocean. Little William was pleased to see that the kit, even while in the water, maintained its proper position,—that is, it swam bottom downwards. It floated buoyantly, moreover, as if it had been made of cork. He was prepared for this; for he remembered having listened to a conversation in the forecastle of the Pandora, relating to this very chest, in which Ben Brace had taken the principal part, and in which the sea-going qualities of his kit had been freely and proudly commented upon. William remembered how the ci-devant man-o’-war’s-man had boasted of his craft, as he called the kit, proclaiming it “a reg’lar life-buoy in case o’ bein’ cast away at sea,” and declaring that, “if ’t war emp’y,—as he hoped it never should be,—it would float the whole crew o’ a pinnace or longboat.” It was partly through this reminiscence that the idea of launching the chest had occurred to little William; and, as he saw it receding from the stern of the Catamaran, he had some happiness in the hope, that the confidence of his companion and protector might not be misplaced; but that the vaunted kit might prove the preserver, not only of his life, but of the life of one who to little William was now even dearer than Ben Brace. That one was Lilly Lalee. <hr /></div> <div class="bodytext"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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