When he recovered his
senses he began to look for shelter; there was a signal station not
far off, but he could not see it. He went away from the pitiless sea
through an opening between low conical hills, covered with dark
scrub, over a pathway composed of drift sand and broken shells. He
found an old hut without a door. There was no one in it; he went
inside, and lay down shivering.
At daybreak a boy, the son of Ratcliff, the signal man, started out
to look for his goats, and as they sometimes passed the night in the
old fowlhouse, he looked in for them. But instead of the goats, he
saw the naked cabin boy. "Who are you?" he said, "and what are you
doing here, and where did you come from?"
"I have been shipwrecked," replied the cabin boy; and then he sat up
and began to cry.
Young Ratcliff ran off to tell his father what he had found; and the
boy was brought to the cottage, put to bed, and supplied with food
and drink. The signal for a wreck was hoisted at the flagstaff, but
when the signallman went to look for a wreck he could not find one.
He searched along the shore and found the dead body of the captain,
and a piece of splintered spar seven or eight feet long, on which the
cabin boy had come ashore. The 'Ecliptic', with her cargo and crew,
had completely disappeared, while the signalman, near at hand, slept
peacefully, undisturbed by her crashing timbers, or the shouts of the
drowning seamen.
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