ut it in his mouth and chewed slowly upon it at first, as though not
quite certain whether to swallow it or not. Finally he mustered courage
and made away with a portion of it, waiting some minutes to see if it
produced pain. It was apparently all right, and then he swallowed the
rest. We concluded to keep the beef and eat it as a last resort.

The breeze freshened in the southeast, and we ran along steadily. If it
held, we could make about a hundred miles a day, and raise the African
coast within a week. There was a chance, if we could stand the strain.

It was now the sixth day since we had left the _Pirate_, and we figured
that she must have rounded the Cape, and would now be standing along up
the South Atlantic with the steady southeast trade behind her. Other
ships would be in the latitude of Cape Town, and if we could make the
northing, we might raise one and be picked up. I pictured the horrors the
poor girl sitting beside me must endure if we were adrift for days in the
whale-boat. What she had already gone through was enough to shake the
nerves of the strongest woman, but here she sat, quietly looking at the
water, her eyes sometimes filled with tears, while not a word of
complaint escaped her lips.

Her example nerved me. I had passed the order to stop all talking except
when necessary, as it would only add to thirst. We ran along in silence.

We had no compass save the one hanging to my watch-chain, as big as my
thumb-nail, but I managed to make a pretty straight course for all that.
The wind freshened and was quite cool. The sunlight, sparkling over the
ocean, which now turned dark blue with a speck of white here and there to
windward, warmed us enough to keep off actual chill, but the men who had
taken off their coats to make a little more of a spread to the fair wind
soon requested permission to put them on again. Sitting absolutely quiet
as we were, the air was keener than if we were going about the sheltered
decks of a ship.

On we went, the swell rolling under us and giving us a twisting motion.
Sometimes we would be in a long hollow where the breeze would fail. Then,
as we rose sternwrard, the little sail would fill, and away we would go,
racing along the slanting crest of the long sea, the foam rushing from
the boat's sides with a hopeful, hissing sound, until the swell would
gain on us and go under, leaving the boat with her bow pointing up the
receding slope and her headway almost gone, to drop i