onsible for the proper administration of law and order; that
officers and crew should fare alike on our scanty store of food, and
that with care we should probably make out, with the help of seal meat
and birds, a reduced ration for some little time. He would detail our
several duties to-morrow. Then we were dismissed to seek "tired
nature's sweet restorer" as best we could.

With fourteen hours of severe labor, tired, wet, and hungry, we were
yet glad enough to sink to rest amid the bushes with but the sky for a
canopy and a hummock of sand for a pillow. In my own case sleep was
hard to win. For a long time I lay watching the stars and speculating
upon the prospects of release from our island prison. Life seemed to
reach dimly uncertain into the future, with shadow pictures
intervening of famished men and bereaved families.

I could hear the waves within a few rods of our resting-places--there
was no music in them now--lapping the beach in their restlessness, and
now and then an angry roar from the outside reef, as though the sea
was in rage over its failure to reach us. I realized that for more
than a thousand miles the sea stretched away in every direction before
meeting inhabited shores and for treble that distance to our native
land; that our island was but a small dot in the vast Pacific--a dot
so small that few maps give it recognition. Truly it was a dismal
outlook that "tired nature" finally dispelled and that sleep
transformed into oblivion; for I went to sleep finally while recalling
old stories of family gatherings where was always placed a vacant
chair for the loved absent one should he ever return.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs_, by
Charles Darwin. Walter Scott: 24 Warwick Lane, London, 1842. If Mr.
Darwin had known of the proximity of the Midway and Pearl and Hermes
reefs he would probably have doubts as to the true character of our
atoll.]

III

ON THE ISLAND

_Sunday, October 30._ No pretensions to the official observance of the
Sabbath were made to-day. We always had religious services on board
the ship when the weather permitted on Sunday, but to-day every effort
has been made to further the safety of our condition.

The captain, executive officer, and many of the crew went off early to
the wreck in order to make further search for supplies and equipment.
The wreck appears from the island to be about as we left it, for the
wind has been lig