nued, 'is to keep everyone in heart.
And anyway I don't stomach water with blood in it--specially Dago
blood. . . . Jarvis and Webster, fall to baling: and you, Prout, hand
us over the tiller and dig out something for breakfast.'

"I had found a plug of tobacco in my pocket and seated myself to
slice it: and as I cut it upon my palm, my eyes fell on Farrell's
yet-heaving shoulders. . . . Of a sudden then it came upon me that,
even with the luck we'd carried, men can't go through seven days and
eight nights in an open boat and emerge quite sane. Macnaughten had
put up a gallant, a magnificent pretence. 'The Old Man's Penny
Readings,' as Grimalson had dubbed those evenings when the boats had
closed up and the crews sang Moody and Sankey or _My Mary_--'The Old
Man's Penny Readings, or Pea-nuts on the Pacific'--had been just as
grandly simple as anything in the Gospel. No: that's wrong--they had
come straight out of the Gospel, a last chapter of it the skipper had
found floating and recovered, and would carry up, a proud passport to
his God.

"But Macnaughten was gone, and with him the whole lovely illusion.
He had kept us in a nursery, separated from hell by a half-inch
plank; and here we were all beasts, consigned to ravening and to die
of unsatisfied bestial wants--yes, and commanded by a monkey-man who
chattered of keeping everyone in heart! _He!_"

"So there it was. I told you, Roddy, that it all happened like a
nightmare--or, if you prefer it, a composite photograph--of any dozen
stories you can recall. Here are the facts; and I will try to give
them succinctly, as in a police-report.

"We were eight in the boat:"

"Grimalson,--in command.
Davis, Prout--A.B. seamen.
Webster, Martinez--Ordinary seamen.
Farrell, Santa and I--Passengers."

"Our victuals were:--4 lb. of pork (about) and 7 lb. of ship-bread,
all messed with blood: 3 cans of potted meat, 2 of preserved fruit,
one tin of sardines: for liquid, half a gallon of rum and, in the
breaker, about 3 pints of water.

"We were, as we calculated, four hundred miles at least from any
known land, and we had no chart on board: we might be within a
hundred miles of the fringe of traffic.

"The sea was calm: the wind came in intermittent light draughts from
the north. The sky was a great burning-glass, holding no hint of
rain."

"Now from the very beginning--from the moment we left the ship--I
knew that, if we were to perish of h