ng madly up and down the hills and valleys formed by the waves, and
sometimes leaping clean out of the water from one mountainous ridge to
another.

And thus, the weary hours passed till morning, without giving them a
moment's rest from their anxious labour, the constant fear of being
overset and swallowed up by the tiger-like billows that raced after them
banishing the feeling of fatigue, and making them forget for the while
their disappointment.

When the sun rose, for the fourth time since they had been left deserted
on the deep, the boys were completely worn out.

David's leg, too, had got worse; whether from the exposure or not they
could not tell, but it had swollen up enormously, and he could hardly
move; so, Jonathan had to take his place at the steering oar, and act
under his directions carefully, as the sea was still very high, and it
required critical judgment and a quick eye to prevent the boat being
taken broadside on by any of the swelling waves that followed fast in
their track, raising their towering crests and foaming with impotent
fury as far as the eye could reach, astern, and to their right hand and
their left, while in front the waters sometimes uplifted themselves into
a solid wall, as if to stop their way. With mid-day, came a change of
scene.

The wind gradually died away, and there fell a dead calm, while the sea
subsided in unison; although a sullen swell remained, in evidence of old
Neptune's past anger, and to show that he had a temper of his own when
he liked to use it--a swell that rocked the boat like a baby's cradle,
and flapped the loose sail backwards and forwards across their heads, in
such a disagreeable manner that David suggested their hauling it down;
which they did, the boat not rolling half so much without its
perpendicular weight, while it was pleasanter for them.

"I tell you what, Dave," suggested Jonathan after a while to his friend,
who was stretched out on the stern-sheets, resting his wounded leg on a
seat, "I think if you'd let me bandage your thigh with a strip of my
shirt, and keep it soaked with water, the evaporation of the sun would
take down the swelling and make it feel better?"

"So it would probably," he assented; "and at the same time, Jonathan,
get those fish and the bird out of the locker. I had almost forgotten
them;--I suppose, because I don't feel hungry yet! We will skin them
and split them in two: and if we expose them spread out on top of the
s