After searching for more than half an hour without results, the dinghy decided to return to the big boat. But no sooner had they made up their minds than they heard a faint call from a black mass of something that was rapidly drifting by the side of the dinghy.

They followed and caught up with the mass of things. Luce was struggling in the water near the deck, and apparently in a dying throes.

When they caught him, they found him tied to a floating deck with a rope. He wrapped the rope around his waist and fastened one end of the rope to a bolt to keep him seated, but now it seems that it saved his life.

The boat was not built strongly, and when it sank, the hull naturally cracked into pieces; It is conceivable that the sea water rushing into the cabin caused the deck to break away from the hull, and the deck undoubtedly surfaced along with the other debris, and Luce floated with it, thus escaping a terrible death.

It was more than an hour before he could speak about himself or learn from the sailors what had happened to our boat.

Finally he was fully conscious and detailed how he felt in the water. It turned out that when he first regained consciousness, he found himself below the surface of the water, spinning at unimaginable speed, with a rope wrapped tightly around his neck several times.

Then he suddenly felt himself rise quickly, his head hit a hard object, and he lost consciousness again.

When he woke up again, he was more conscious than before, but still in a state of utter dazedness. He knew something must have happened, and he knew he was in the water, even though his mouth was above the surface and he was able to breathe relatively freely.

At this time, the deck is likely to drift rapidly with the wind, dragging him behind him as he floats on his back.

Of course, as long as he could maintain this position, there was almost no chance that he would be drowned. In a moment a wave threw him straight onto the board, and he did his best to keep himself on the deck, and took advantage of the opportunity to cry out for help from time to time.

Just before he was discovered by the first mate, he was so exhausted that he had to let go and fall back into the water, completely giving up hope of being rescued. During the whole course of his struggle, he did not think of anything related to the root cause of his suffering.

A hazy feeling of terror and despair took over his entire brain. When he was finally rescued, his mind was almost blank; As mentioned earlier, it took almost an hour for him to fully regain consciousness.

As for Wu Yongchang, after they had tried all sorts of methods in vain for three and a half hours, Luce suggested rubbing his body vigorously with flannel dipped in hot oil, which revived him from a state of near death.

The wound on his neck was ugly, but it wasn't very serious, so it healed quickly.

After encountering that rare gale, the Moby Dick sailed into Queensport at about 9 a.m.

The two managed to get back to Mr. Martin's house before breakfast, but fortunately the party ended late, so breakfast was slightly delayed that day.

Wu Yongchang guessed that all the people at the table were so tired that he did not notice their exhaustion.

However, Wu Yongchang can often work miracles when it comes to deception.

After that day, they talked about it a lot. But when I talk, I can't help but tremble.

In one of their conversations, Lustein frankly confessed that the most horrific and painful moment of his life was the brief moment of that night in the boat when he first found himself overwhelmed and felt that he was about to lose his breath.

They cannot draw inferences from anything that is for or against mere prejudice, even if it is based on the simplest and clearest arguments.

Some people may think that such a distress just now will effectively calm Wu Yongchang's passion for the sea.

But on the contrary, after they were miraculously rescued, he felt even more intensely a desire for the adventurous life of a voyager.

In just one week, it turned out to be long enough to erase the shadow left in the memory of that distress, and produce a delightful and exciting color in my mind, showing a vivid picture.

Mr. Wu's conversations with Mr. Luce became more frequent and more intriguing. He told his nautical tales in a peculiar way, perhaps half of which was pure fiction, a way that appealed to Yongchang's appetite and had the greatest effect on his passionate, fantastical, and somewhat melancholy character.

And strangely, the more he described his painful and desperate moments horrifyingly, the more he aroused Wu Yongchang's fascination with the life of a sailor.

He felt little sympathy for the bright side of the picture, and he always dreamed of shipwrecks, starvation, death, or capture by barbarians; I dreamed of surviving my life in pain and sorrow in some inaccessible and unknown ocean, on a gloomy and desolate rocky island.

Since then he has been convinced that such dreams, or such dreams, because they amount to dreams, are very ordinary, like the countless melancholy of the world.

Luce fully understands this state of mind. In fact, it is likely that their intimacy has caused their hearts to feel.