hip,--the
Frenchman, Le Gros. "_Allons! messieurs_! It's time to try fortune
again. _Sacre_! we must eat, or die!"

The question may be asked, What were these men to eat? There appeared
to be no food upon the raft. There _was_ none,--not a morsel of any
kind that might properly be called meat for man. Nor had there been,
ever since the second day after the departure of the raft from the side
of the burning bark. A small box of sea-biscuits, that, when
distributed, gave only two to each man, was all that had been saved in
their hurried retreat from the decks of the _Pandora_. These had
disappeared in a day. They had brought away water in greater abundance,
and caught some since in their shirts, and on the spread sail,--nearly
after the same fashion and in the same rain-storm that had afforded the
well-timed supply to Ben Brace and his _protege_.

But the stock derived from both sources was on the eve of being
exhausted. Only a small ration or two to each man remained in the cask;
but thirsty as most of them might be, they were suffering still more
from the kindred appetite of hunger.

What did Le Gros mean when he said they must eat? What food was there
on the raft, to enable them to avoid the terrible alternative appended
to his proposal,--"eat, or die"! What _had_ kept them from dying: since
it was now many days, almost weeks, since they had swallowed the last
morsel of biscuit so sparingly distributed amongst them?

The answer to all these interrogatories is one and the some. It is too
fearful to be pronounced,--awful even to think of!

The clean-stripped skeleton lying upon the raft, and which was clearly
that of a human being; the bones scattered about,--some of them, as
already observed, held in hand, and in such fashion as to show the
horrid use that was being made of them,--left no doubt as to the nature
of the food upon which the hungering wretches had been subsisting.

This, and the flesh of a small shark, which they had succeeded in luring
alongside, and killing with the blow of a handspike, had been their only
provision since parting with the _Pandora_. There were sharks enough
around them now. A score, at the very least, might have been quartering
the sea, within sight of the raft; but these monsters, strange to say,
were so shy, that not one of them would approach near enough to allow
them an opportunity of capturing it! Every attempt to take them had
proved unsuccessful. Such of the