"Take a boot-hook, Noah, and shove her clear off the counter," said Morrison, looking over the side. "By the way the rudder hangs, there is a strong current running here, and that will soon drift her clear of the ship."
The boat, with its as yet helpless load of ruffianism, was soon shoved astern of the Hermione, and, as Morrison foretold, it rapidly drifted away on the starboard quarter.
"Oh, imagine what those fellows may—nay, must—endure, when they all become sober after so many days and nights of almost ceaseless intoxication!" said Heriot, looking after the boat with very little commiseration in his eye or voice, as it rose and fell on the long glassy rollers that glittered in the full sheen of the waning moon, whose disc was dipping now at the horizon, and sending from thence a path of dazzling light across the ocean. "Sea and sky will be round them," continued the doctor. "As the ballad says:
'Water, water everywhere,
Yet not a drop to drink!'"
"Aye, yer honour; the contents o' that 'ere gang-cask won't last 'em long," said Noah with a grin.
"The poor wretches will go mad!" said Morley, who thought of his own sufferings on the wreck.
"Mad?" repeated Noah.
"Yes; and drink each other's blood, perhaps. I have read of such things."
"And I've heard of such things, many times, in forecastle yarns; but as for men positively eating one another——"
"They may do so, and welcome, Noah," interrupted Captain Phillips, who was surveying, with increasing wrath, the disordered and dilapidated state of his once beautiful ship, the pride of his owners, and the pet of his heart.