opped, hammered, and pried in
hunger and anxiety, and with lessening strength, while the days passed
by--fortunately spared the torture of thirst, for there was plenty of
water in the tanks. Upheld by the dominating influence of Elisha,
Martin, and Amos, they stripped the upper works and fed to the fires
every door and sash, every bulkhead and wooden partition, all chairs,
stools, and tables, cabin berths and forecastle bunks. Then they
attempted sending down the topmasts, but gave it up for lack of
strength to get mast-ropes aloft, and attacked instead the boats on the
chocks, of which there were four.

It was no part of the plan to ask help of passing craft and have their
distressed condition taken advantage of; but when the hopelessness of
the fight at last appealed to the master spirits, they consented to the
signaling of an east-bound steamer, far to the northward, in the hope
of getting food. So the English ensign, union down, was again flown
from the gaff. It was at a time when Elisha could not stand up at the
wheel, when Amos at the engines could not have reversed them, when
Martin--man of iron--staggered weakly around among the rest and struck
them with a pump-brake, keeping them at work. (They would strive under
the blows, and sit down when he had passed.) But the flag was not seen;
a haze arose between the two craft and thickened to fog.

By Elisha's reckoning they were on the Banks now, about a hundred miles
due south from Cape Sable, and nearer to Boston than to Halifax;
otherwise he might have made for the latter port and defied alien
prejudice. But the fog continued, and it was not port they were looking
for now; it was help, food: they were working for life, not salvage;
and, wasting no steam, they listened for whistles or fog-horns, but
heard none near enough to be answered by their weak voices.

And so the boat, dragging the dismal mockery behind her, plodded and
groped her way on the course which Elisha had shaped for Boston, while
man after man dropped in his tracks, refusing to rise; and those that
were left nourished the fires as they could, until the afternoon of the
third day of fog, when the thumping, struggling engines halted,
started, made a half-revolution, and came to a dead stop. Amos crawled
on deck and forward to the bridge, where, with Elisha's help, he
dragged on the whistle-rope and dissipated the remaining steam in a
wheezy, gasping howl, which lasted about a half-minute. It was ans