It must have been on towards midnight when Will awoke to feel the rain beating on his face.
The wind, too, was blowing, and he aroused himself as he remembered Jack’s prediction of the storm, and he noticed a slight ruddy glow on the waters near the raft.
He discerned the cause of the strange illumination as he hurried to where Jack was.
The boatswain was at the extreme windward end of the raft. Before him, on the bottom of the raft, a small fire flashed and spluttered.
He had emptied the water out from the cask, knocked in the head, and then, breaking up the box that held the biscuits, had built a fire with the wood inside the cask.
This he kept feeding continuously with bits of the wood.
Will crept to his side and spoke his name.
The boatswain did not speak until he had drawn the grating in tow upon the raft, and, breaking a piece of wood from it, placed it in the cask.
“Don’t wake the others up,” said Jack, in a low, hurried tone, that had a shade of excitement quite unusual to the old sailor.
“What is it, Jack,—the cask—the fire?”