Thus commenced one of the strangest voyages in history.
All that day, and the next, and the next, and the next, the boat, with its crew of four, headed south, south and south by west.
They had taken count of food and water, and to each was apportioned his share.
Each morning Jean Petit, at whose feet lay the provisions, grimly doled out the scanty portions.
At the end of the week a change had come over the four.
They were lean and weatherbeaten; their hands and faces were blistered by the sun. Their cheeks were sunken. There was an anxious look in their hollow eyes.
At the end of fourteen days the change was still more remarkable. Their hair and beards had grown strangely long; their hands had taken the appearance of claws, tipped with long sharp, carnivorous-looking fingernails. Their lips were dry and broken, and their skins had turned from bronze to an ugly yellow.
For ten days there had fallen not a drop of rain; they had left but a pint and a half of impure water.
On the morning of the fifteenth day Jean Petit divided this, together with the remnant of the food, into four even portions!