Meanwhile the pangs of hunger and thirst were steadily intensifying with us. Our tongues grew dry and hard, and the doctor’s lips began to crack, while the men could talk of nothing but the clear, gurgling brooks and sparkling cascades by the side of which they had stood in other days.
The wind had freshened somewhat during the night, and toward sun-rise a few clouds worked up to windward, the sight of which induced us for a time to hope that we might be blessed with a shower. But they passed over without dropping any of their longed-for moisture upon us, and the sun once more rose up in unclouded splendour to torture us with his scorching rays.
Our repugnance to raw fowl had by this time entirely passed away, and although upon examination our poultry turned out to be rather high, one of the defunct chickens was torn asunder, and, being divided among us with the most scrupulous fairness, was devoured in an incredibly short time.
“Ah!” exclaimed one of the men, as the last morsel of his allowance disappeared down his throat. “That’s the most tasty snack as I’ve ate for many a long day. It’s a pity there ain’t more of it. But there, I s’pose it won’t do to eat up all our wittals to oncet; let’s be thankful as we’ve had even that small mossel. I say, mates, don’t you find these here fowl-bones very sweet picking?”
“Uncommon,” answered another. “There’s a sort of a peculiar flavour with ’em that I don’t disremember to have tasted with fowl-bones when I’ve had ’em for breakfast afore.”
There was unquestionably “a sort of a peculiar flavour” with my share, but I should scarcely have referred to it with such gusto as they did, I thought.
“Now if I could only have washed my breakfast down with a pannikin of grog,” remarked a third, “I should ha’ said as I’d thoroughly enj’yed it.”
“Grog!” exclaimed the first speaker. “Grog be blowed! Whenever I’ve a glass of grog I always wants another on top of it, and so I should to-day. I’d give all the grog as ever was brewed for one good long swig at the spring which bubbles out from under the rocks behind my poor old mother’s house on Dartmoor. That is sweet water, if you like, mates.”
“’Tain’t sweeter, I know, than the water of the trout-stream in which I used to fish with a bit of twine bent on to a crooked pin, when I was a boy,” remarked another. “Many’s the time as I’ve gone down on my hands and knees upon a rock or a little bit of a shingly bar, when I’ve been hot and thirsty—as it might be now—and drunk and drunk until I could drink no more. My eyes! mates, but they was drinks, and no mistake.”
And so they rambled on, their dry lips smacking with every fresh reminiscence.