"What wisdom!" cried Fenayrou. "Always he thinks of everything, our doctor: everything—"
He stopped with the phrase on his lips and his hand outstretched toward the center of the platform. Here, in a damp depression among the reeds, had lain the wicker-covered bottle of green glass in which they carried their water. It was gone.
"Where is that flask?" he demanded. "The sun has grilled me like a bone."
"You will have to grill some more," said Dubosc grimly. "This crew is put on rations."
Fenayrou stared at him wide-eyed, and from the shadow of a folded mat The Parrot thrust his purpled face. "What do you sing me there? Where is that water?"
"I have it," said Dubosc.
They saw, in fact, that he held the flask between his knees, along with their single packet of food in its wrapping of cocoanut husk.
"I want a drink," challenged Perroquet.
"Reflect a little. We must guard our supplies like reasonable men. One does not know how long we may be floating here."...
Fell a silence among them, heavy and strained, in which they heard only the squeaking of frail basketwork as their raft labored in the wash. Slow as was their progress, they were being pushed steadily outward and onward, and the last cliffs of New Caledonia were no longer even a smudge in the west, but only a hazy line. And still they had seen no moving thing upon the great round breast of the sea that gleamed in its corselet of brass plates under a brazen sun. "So that is the way you talk now?" began The Parrot, half choking. "You do not know how long? But you were sure enough when we started."