"'And then?' I asked.
"'Oh, it'll rain,' said he, affecting confidence. 'It rained for a hundred last night, didn't it? We've run south of the dry latitudes and soon we'll be getting more rain than we've any use for. There's the small keg of rum, too.… Great thing as we're situated,' the fool continued, '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. | A.B. Seaman. |
| Prout. | A.B. Seaman. |
| Webster. | Ordinary Seaman. |
| Martinez. | Ordinary Seaman. |
| Farrell. | Passenger. |
| Santa. | Passenger. |
| and I. | Passenger. |
"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."