t unless we could rig up a
sea-anchor. We were sure we would drown. We made one by rolling four
blankets together tightly and tying around them a long rope with
which our boat was made fast to the ship when we embarked. This we
let drag astern about ninety-feet. It held the boat fairly steady,
and kept the boat's head to the seas. We fastened it to the ring in
the stern. We used this sea-anchor many times throughout our voyage,
and without it we would have gone down sure. Of course we took in
a great deal of water, anyhow; but we could keep her baled out,
and the sea-anchor prevented her from swamping.

"The nights were frightful, and many times all of us had terrible
dreams, and sometimes thought we were on shore. Men would cry out about
things they thought they saw, and other men would have to tell them
they were not so. We were always up and down on top of the swells, and
our bodies ached so terribly from the sitting-down position and from
the joggling of the motion that we would cry with pain. The salt water
got in all of our bruises and cracked our hands and feet, but there
was no help for us, and we had to grin and bear it. A shark took hold
of our sea-anchor and we were afraid that he would tear it to pieces.

"Every day the captain took an observation when he could, and told
us where we were. We made about a hundred miles a day, but very often
we steered out of our course because we had no matches or lantern.

"On the eighteenth we were in latitude 26 53' South, and the captain
said that Easter Island was in the 27th degree, so after all we had
steered pretty well.

"On the night of the nineteenth, we had a fearful storm. It seemed
worse than the hurricane we had on the El Dorado. All night long we
thought that every minute would end us, and we lay huddled in misery,
not caring much whether we went down or not. But the next morning,
we set part of the sail again, and at noon that day the captain took a
sight and found that we were in latitude 27 8' south. Easter Island
is 27 10' south. And now we began to fear that we might run past
Easter Island. If we did, we knew we could never get back with the
wind. We had squall after squall now, but we felt sure that soon we
must see land. Our soup was all gone, and we were living on the soda
crackers mixed with water and milk. Each of us got a cupful of this
stuff once a day.

"On the twenty-second, when we were nine days out, I saw the land at
ten o'clock in the m