Our bread we dared scarcely eat, even in the morsels in which it was doled out, lest it might excite that awful thirst which we had no liquid to assuage, and which the summer sun, when blazing over our heads at noon, rendered worse by a thousand degrees, making us long for night, when the moist dew would fall on our parched lips and arid visages; then night made us long for day, in the hope of seeing a sail, as we were in terror lest one should pass us unseen; and I am assured that more than one must have done so.
Amid his own bodily misery, poor Hartly frequently reproached himself for having, as he said, "lured me from a quiet occupation into a career so fatal and disastrous."
The older seamen sought to encourage us by relating how often they had been wrecked, and yet had escaped death.
"I remember," said Hans Peterkin, "when the Brenda, a bark of Kirkwall, was wrecked on her voyage from Jamaica. The night was rough, and we were under close-reefed topsails, when a sea struck her, and unshipped her rudder, just as she sprang a leak. All hands were ordered to the pumps, and to the thrumming of a sail; but the loss of the rudder hove her dead in the wind's eye, so her mainmast went by the board, bringing with it the fore and mizen topmasts, making her a useless wreck in a moment. I was washed overboard; but there was no time to look after me, so I rode on the mainmast all night. When day broke there was no ship to be seen—she must have foundered in the dark. Three days and two nights I rode upon that shattered mast, till a Spanish schooner, bound for Rio, picked me up; yet I never lost heart, shipmates, for I knew I should be saved."
"How?" said Reeves.
"Because we have a saying among us in Orkney, that he who eats of the dulse of Guiodin,* and drinks of the well of Kildingie, will escape everything but the Black Death; and many a time I have eaten of one and drunk of the other."
* The creek of Odin, in Stronza.
On the fifth day another man died, and was committed to the deep. No one stood up this time, we were becoming either too weak or too callous.
"Water—water," sighed Paul Reeves; "when ashore, I will never drink aught but pure spring water again."
"Bide ye, messmate, and dinna gut a swimming fish; or, as we say in Orkney, cut up nae herrings till ye have them in your net. When you are ashore!—ashore indeed—when shall we ever see the shore?"