n as I got my legs
an' wits again I was up on deck, and already the barque was settlin'
by the head like a burst crock. She'd crushed her breastbone in on a
sunken tramp of a derelict--a dismasted water-logged lump, that maybe
had been washin' about the Atlantic for twenty year' an' more before
her app'inted time came to drift across our fair-way an' settle the
hash o' the _John S. Hancock_. Sir, I reckon she went down inside o'
five minutes. We'd but bare time to get out one boat and push clear
o' the whirl of her. All hands jumped in; she was but a sixteen foot
boat, an' we loaded her down to the gun'l a'most. There was a brave
star-shine, but no moon. Cruel things happen 'pon the sea."

He passed a hand over his eyes, as if to brush off the film his
sufferings had drawn across them. Then he pursued:

"Cruel things happen 'pon the sea. We'd no food nor drink but a tin o'
preserved pears; Lord knows how that got there; but 'twas soon done.
Pete had a small compass, a gimcrack affair hangin' to his watch-chain,
an' we pulled by it west-sou'-west towards the nighest land, which we
made out must be some one or another o' the Leeward Islands; but 'twas
more to keep ourselves busy than for aught else: the boat was so low in
the water that even with the Trade to help us, we made but a mile an
hour, an' had to be balin' all day and all night. The third day, as the
sun grew hot, two o' the men went mad. We had to pitch 'em overboard an'
beat 'em off wi' the oars till they drowned: else they'd ha' sunk the
boat. This seemed to hang on Pete's mind, in a way. All the next night
he talked light-headed; said he could hear the dead men hailin' their
names. About midnight he jumped after 'em--to fetch 'em, he said--an'
was drowned. He took his compass with him, but that didn't make much
odds. The boat was lighter now, an' we hadn' to bale. Pretty soon I got
too weak to notice how the men went. I was lyin' wi' my head under the
stern sheets an' only pulled mysel' up, now an' then, to peer out over
the gun'l. I s'pose 'twas the splashes as the men went over that made me
do this. I don't know for certain. There was sharks about: cruel things
happen 'pon the sea. The boat was in a gashly cauch of blood too. One
chap--Jeff Tresawna it was: his mother lived over to Looe--had tried to
open a vein, to drink, an' had made a mess o't an' bled to death. Far as
I know there was no fightin' to eat one another, same as one hears tell
of now an' t