And now ensued a painful and weary time.
The wind had died down entirely. It seemed as though it would never blow again. The sea all round was like molten glass, a long rolling swell coming in from the north-west—a swell that was delusive in the extreme, causing them to believe they were making progress to the south, although the current was dead against them. The sun’s rays, beating straight down from the heavens and reflected from the waters, were doubly fierce, and there was no awning for protection.
Two days passed like this; then poor Smith sickened and died. Tom had given him the last drop of water that remained in the boat. So between them Ginger Brandy and he gently lifted the body up and dropped it astern, and the scene that followed was horrible to witness. Before their eyes the corpse was torn in pieces by those tigers of the sea—the hammer-headed sharks. There must have been at least a dozen at that dreadful feast, yet next minute several were floating alongside, and casting sidelong glances up at the rowers with their hungry, eager, and awful eyes.
On and on and on they rowed, resting often on their oars and gazing round them in the vain hope of descrying a sail.
A bird alighted in the water on the forenoon of next day. A strange weird-looking gull, the like of which Tom had never seen before. It was so tame that Brandy easily knocked it dead with his oar, and they sucked its blood and devoured the flesh raw and warm. Horrid meal though this appears to have been, it revived them better than anything else save water could have done. Of food there was abundance in the boat; it was water alone they craved for. That same evening it rained a little. They caught the water in their jackets and eagerly drank it.
Another long dark black starless night; but in the morning the clouds were dissolved, and the sun shone more fiercely than ever.
No rain, no mist even.
They dipped biscuits in the sea and sucked them, but the thirst grew more intense.
Tom suffered worst; his agony was fearful. With eyes and brow that felt bursting with pain, and swollen and parched tongue, he sat at the oar and rowed feebly and mechanically.
Birds came now in larger numbers, but none came near enough to be caught.