comparison
with the temperature of the air, and we remained overboard for nearly
half an hour; then we scrambled back into the boat again, rubbed
ourselves and each other vigorously with the palms of our hands, while
our bodies were in process of being dried by the joint action of the sun
and air; and finally we donned our clothes again, they being by this
time quite dry, feeling much refreshed and in every way considerably the
better for our bath. Our next business was to go to breakfast, but our
bread was by this time so completely destroyed as to be quite uneatable.
We therefore threw it overboard, and made a meagre and unpalatable meal
off more raw salt beef, washed down as before with weak grog.

And while the meal was in progress I brought up the question that had
been vexing me during the previous night; namely, the direction in which
we should steer. I had been giving this matter my best consideration
during the time that I had been overboard; indeed Dumaresq and I had
been discussing it together as we swam industriously round and round the
boat, and we both agreed in the conclusion that the appearance of the
sky warranted the belief that we were on the very margin of the north-
east trade-wind, if not actually within its influence. And if this were
indeed the case, it appeared that the proper course for us to adopt
would be to bear up and run for the West Indies, instead of attempting
to reach the Azores or even the Canaries. For while Corvo was only
seven hundred and twenty miles from the spot where the Indiaman was
destroyed, while Teneriffe was about thirteen hundred and eighty miles,
and Saint Thomas, in the West Indies, fifteen hundred miles from the
same spot, we could reckon with tolerable certainty upon reaching the
latter island in about twelve days if the breeze now blowing actually
happened to be the young trade-wind; while, under the same supposition,
it was exceedingly doubtful when, if ever, we should succeed in reaching
either the Azores or the Canary Islands. It was altogether too
momentous a question for me to settle off-hand and upon my own
responsibility, so I laid the matter before the whole boat's company,
inviting them to decide it by a preponderating vote. I found that the
majority agreed with me in the opinion that we might be on the fringe
of, if not actually within, the influence of the trade-wind, but when it
came to the question of bearing up and running for the West Indies, th