of Santos and his horrible
heavy cane. Good God! she was in the power of that! I must live for Eva
indeed; must save myself to save and protect my innocent and helpless
girl.

Again I was a man; stronger than ever was the stimulus now, louder than
ever the call on every drop of true man's blood in my perishing frame.
It should not perish! It should not!

Yet my throat was parched; my lips were caked; my frame was hollow. Very
weak I was already; without sustenance I should surely die. But as yet
I was far enough from death, or I had done disdaining the means of life
that all this time lay ready to my hand. A number of dead fowls imparted
ballast to my little craft.

Yet I could not look at them in all these hours; or I could look, but
that was all. So I must sit up one hour more, and keep a sharper eye
than ever for the tiniest glimmer of a sail. To what end, I often asked
myself? I might see them; they would never see me.

Then my eyes would fail, and "you squeamish fool!" I said at intervals,
until my tongue failed to articulate; it had swollen so in my mouth.
Flying fish skimmed the water like thick spray; petrels were so few that
I could count them; another shark swam round me for an hour. In sudden
panic I dashed my knuckles on the wooden bars, to get at a duck to give
the monster for a sop. My knuckles bled. I held them to my mouth. My
cleaving tongue wanted more. The duck went to the shark; a few minutes
more and I had made my own vile meal as well.

CHAPTER V. MY REWARD

The sun declined; my shadow broadened on die waters; and now I felt that
if my cockle-shell could live a little longer, why, so could I.

I had got at the fowls without further hurt. Some of the bars took out,
I discovered how. And now very carefully I got my legs in, and knelt;
but the change of posture was not worth the risk one ran for it; there
was too much danger of capsizing, and failing to free oneself before she
filled and sank.

With much caution I began breaking the bars, one by one; it was hard
enough, weak as I was; my thighs were of more service than my hands.

But at last I could sit, the grating only covering me from the knees
downwards. And the relief of that outweighed all the danger, which, as I
discovered to my untold joy, was now much less than it had been before.
I was better ballast than the fowls.

These I had attached to the lashings which had been blown asunder by the
explosion; at one end of the coop