nto the following
hollow and repeat the action.

The English sailor who had drank the water was now stone dead. Johnson
gave me a look, and I began a conversation with Miss Sackett, endeavoring
to engage her attention. A splash from forward made her look, and she saw
what had happened. Then she turned and, looking up at me, placed her soft
little hand on mine which lay upon the tiller.

"You are very good to me, Mr. Rolling, but I can stand suffering as well
as a man," she said. "I thank you just the same." Then her eyes filled
and she turned away her face. I found something to fix at the rudder
head, and when I was through she was looking over the blue water where
the lumpy trade clouds showed above the horizon's rim.

As the day wore on, the hunger of the men began to show itself. Jenks
kept his wrinkled, leather face to the northward, looking steadily for a
sail, but the other sailors glanced aft several times, and I noticed the
strange glare of the eye which tells of the hungry animal. Some of these
men had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours. One big, heavy-looking young
sailor glanced back several times from the clew of his eye at the girl
sitting aft. But I fixed my gaze upon him so steadily that he shifted his
seat and looked forward.

Late in the afternoon some of the men insisted on eating the beef, and it
was served to them. No ill effects followed, so all hands took their
ration. This satisfied them for the time being, but I knew the thirst
which must surely follow. I had been adrift in an open boat before in the
Pacific. There had been sixteen men at the start, and at the end of four
weeks of horror seven had been picked up to tell a tale which would make
the blood curdle. The memory of this made me sick with fear and anxiety.

Johnson felt so much better from his meal that he stood in the bow with
his little monkey-like figure braced against the mast, his legs on the
gunwales. He said jokingly that he'd raise a sail before eight bells in
the afternoon. Suddenly he cried out:--

"Sail dead ahead, sir!"

"'Tis no jokin' matter," growled Chips, angrily. "Shet yer head, ye
monkey, afore I heave ye over th' side."

Johnson turned fiercely upon him.

"Jokin', you lummax! Slant yer eye forrads, an' don't sit there a-lookin'
at yerself," he snarled.

"Steady, there!" I cried. "Where's the vessel?"

"Right ahead, sir, and standing down this ways, if I see straight."

I stood up on the stern locker and