"Mebbe they won't want to," suggested Ralph.

"Salvage," returned Duff briefly. "There's money in it, you see. Men will do about anything for money enough."

For the next two days they kept their course and took turn about in sailing. As the last glimpse of the slaver faded into nothingness, both felt relieved. They nursed their wounds and endured their sufferings and privations as best they could.

The third day sundry signs betokening a storm lent an anxious expression to Duff's face, that soon transferred itself to Ralph's.

The wind stiffened gradually into half a gale and night closed in, around an ominous and threatening horizon. Though worn and wearied, the mate never gave up the tiller all during that black and perilous siege of darkness.

Ralph bailed and held the main sheet. When the squalls came he slackened up or drew in around the cleat as became necessary.

The scene was intensely depressing, hopeless, terrible. Hardly a word was spoken save in reference to the management of the boat.

Morning found them greatly exhausted and barely able to keep their small craft from broaching to. Had this happened they would have foundered undoubtedly.

The clouds seemed to press the ocean, confining the view to less than half a mile in any direction. The sea was a tumbling mass of gray, seething billows, that tossed the yawl at pleasure hither and thither, the rag of sail barely sufficing to keep her head to windward.

Ralph had endured the terrors of the night without a murmur. But he had been aboard the yawl now about five days on a diet of bread and water. Nature was giving way under the strain.

As he gazed around on the angry scene, where no sign of relenting on the part of the storm was evident, he turned to Duff and fixed on him a hopeless look.

"I don't think I can stand it much longer, sir," he said.

The mate's plight was almost as bad; indeed his wound was worse than Ralph's. But he was tougher; he had been shipwrecked twice previously.

"Lad," he replied, somewhat sternly, "never give up as long as you can bat an eye. That's my doctrine."

And he looked it; so did Ralph a moment later, nor did the boy complain again.

All that weary day they fought a losing battle against wind and wave, and when night once more closed in without any sign of clearing weather, the hearts of both were at the lowest ebb of hope. Had the gale increased they must inevitably have been swamped.

Along about two bells in the first night watch the mate, who had never uttered one word of complaint, groaned aloud.

"Give—me—water," he faltered. "I—I——" And he sank forward against Ralph, and from there to the boat's bottom, where he lay apparently insensible from exhaustion and pain.

The boy seized the tiller, or the yawl, broaching, would have shipped a fatal sea. There was nothing to do but to hold to his post; so after throwing a blanket over Duff he turned his attention to the boat, keeping the shred of sail taut, and the bow as much to windward as possible.

Later on he nodded, but found on awaking that the wind was decreasing. This cheered him into renewed activity for a time, then he fell asleep again, and so continued, with brief interludes of wakefulness, until he felt himself sinking from the seat he had held so long. Once he fancied he caught a gleam of stars; and it seemed that a stillness was pervading the air as the whistle of the wind died into melancholy murmurings. After that he remembered nothing more until a voice penetrated his brain like a trump of doom.

He started up, but fell back weakly. The mate was steering and half lying on the bottom of the boat, while shading his eyes with one hand as he stared over the gunwale.

"Rouse up a bit, lad!" cried Duff, his tones quivering with excitement and weakness. "It's a sail—a sail!"

Ralph struggled to his knees and beheld a large ship bearing down upon them scarcely half a mile away. The sun was up, and the sky bright and fair, with a ragged patch of cloud here and there.

"Hurray!" he cried weakly, then his head swam, and he fell back motionless.

Duff held grimly to his post, even after consciousness had departed. The rescuing party found him with head drooped upon his arm, while his nerveless fingers still rested on the tiller.



CHAPTER XXVII.

Uncle Gideon.

The day was well spent when Ralph again came to his senses. He raised his head and looked about in a half stupefied wondering way.

The lad was in a small, but well lighted stateroom, plainly yet comfortably furnished. A grave looking, middle aged man was feeling his pulse, while a sailor, neatly dressed in a blue jacket and white duck trousers, stood behind with a towel over his arm and a bowl of broth in his hand.

The other was in a navy blue uniform. The gold lace on his cap and the shoulder straps betokened one in authority. Outside, the sun was shining brightly, while a sound of measured tramping and an occasional order in commanding tones, indicated something of military precision in the surroundings.

"Where am I?" asked Ralph, noticing that his hands were rather white and wasted.

"You are on the United States sloop of war, the Adams, homeward bound," replied the officer. "You were picked up six days ago, and have been ill ever since. I am the ship's surgeon."

"Is—is——"

"Yes, Mr. Duff is well," said Dr. Barker, anticipating the boy's inquiry; "that is except his leg, which is progressing finely. You must not talk much—yet. We ran upon the Wanderer after picking you up. Duff related his own adventures and yours, and gave us his reckoning, taken just after you and he left her. We found her after a two days' search, partially dismasted, and the blacks thoroughly cowed by the gale. We sent her to St. Paul De Loando, where she will be appraised and sold.

"It is likely that your share and Mr. Duff's of the prize money will be considerable, as but for you two we would not have made the capture. As you were deceived when shipping on her as to the object of her trip, you can not be held responsible for the crime committed by her captain and owner in violating the law against slave trading. The negroes of course will be set free."

The door here opened and Duff entered on crutches, followed by a tall, sandy whiskered officer, who went up to Ralph at once.

"Well, nephew," said he in a cordial, hearty tone, "how are you? Well enough to stand a stiff surprise?"

Ralph wondered weakly, but his perplexity ended in a smile. It seemed as if every one was very cordial and that his lines were falling in pleasant places at last.

He greeted Duff eagerly and looked at the two naval men inquiringly, remembering the surgeon's warning as to talking.

"This is Chief Quartermaster Gideon Granger, Ralph," said Duff. "Now do you know who he is?"

"Gideon Granger was my father's half brother," replied the lad at once. "He left home before I was born. Grandfather thought he went to Texas, but as he never heard from him, we all supposed he was dead. So—you are—Uncle Gid."

"Yes, my lad," said Granger. "You see your grandfather and I didn't get on together somehow, so one day I tripped anchor and made sail, as I thought, for the West; but the sight of salt water was too much for me. I drifted into a sailor's life, got into the navy, was promoted during the war, and—here I am.

"Meeting up with you, however, is about the strangest streak of luck I have happened with yet. But I am none the less glad to fall in with one of my own kin. You're as welcome to me, lad, as I reckon we were to you and Duff, the morning we sighted you off the Cape Verdes. When he told me who you were I was all broke up. You were pretty well done for."

"I guess I must have given you some trouble since then," returned Ralph, reaching for his uncle's hand. "We did have rather a tough time in that old boat."

"You did that. As soon as you were hoisted aboard, Dr. Barker pronounced you down with coast fever. That trip up the river Duff tells me about, probably planted the seeds, and exposure did the rest—eh, Doc."

The surgeon nodded, then the chief quartermaster added: "But we will be at Norfolk in a week, then I'll apply for shore leave and you and I will go down and see the old man."

"He won't want to see me," remarked Ralph, who then briefly related the circumstances under which he had been driven from home, his encounter with Shard, and the latter's mode of placing him at Gary's mercy.

The old warrant officer laughed over the silly feud, while sympathizing with the boy over its sad results.

"You shall take me home," he concluded. "Father will forgive us both and we'll liven the old gent up a bit. Perhaps we can get him down where he can taste a whiff of salt air, especially if I make a man-'o-war's man out of his grandson."

The doctor now interposed, and said that Ralph had talked, and been talked to, enough that day. So the boy was left to another refreshing sleep, after enjoying his bowl of chicken broth.

Two days later he was out on deck, where the neatness, precision, and martial splendor of everything he saw, quite captivated his young imagination. When they entered the harbor at Fortress Monroe and salutes were fired, yards manned, and flags dipped by the Adams and the friendly foreign war ships anchored there, Ralph felt more than ever that his vocation was that of a sailor.

True to his word, Uncle Gideon soon started with his nephew for the old mountain home that he had not seen for more than thirty years. When Ralph stood aside, and the stern old man gazed upon his first born, the meeting and recognition were touching in the extreme.

Ralph was forgiven for outliving the feud, and the final result was that son and grandson carried the lonely old man with them back to Norfolk, where he was made comfortable in the "Old People's Home," his own means, supplemented by Gideon's savings, paying all expenses.

One day the quartermaster came into their boarding-house, and on entering Ralph's room slapped the lad heartily on the back.

"I've fixed it, nephew," said he jovially. "My ship sails in three days, and I was afraid I might not pull you through in time. But our captain gave us a lift. You know he stands in with some of the big bugs in the navy department at Washington.

"What!" exclaimed Ralph enthusiastically, his eyes glowing, "am I really to get a berth on the training ship as a naval apprentice?"

"Better than that. When I made known that your share of the Wanderer prize money, and what I could spare would pay your way, captain wrote to his friend at Washington, and the upshot of it all is you're to go to Annapolis. Think of that! One year to prepare for your examination—four years as a cadet—then an ensign. Ah, lad! If I'd had your chance at your age I might have been at least a lieutenant. During the war there was more than one such rose to be commodore. But bear in mind: I can renew my youth in watching you. So bear a hand, lad, and do your best. You may live to walk your own quarter-deck yet."

"If I do," replied Ralph, seizing his uncle's hard and weather beaten hand, "it will all be owing to you."

The old veteran grinned, then seemed to remember something.

"Put on your hat, lad," said he. "We will lay a course for the old man over at the Home. You must ask him if fighting for Uncle Sam on sea isn't better than bushwhacking your neighbors in the mountains."

THE END