To those of less experience,—or less quick comprehension,—it may be necessary to repeat the conversation which was being carried on upon the raft,—at the moment when it is thus reintroduced to the notice of the reader. A correct report of this will satisfactorily explain why its original crew had been reduced, from over thirty, to the number of six-and-twenty, exclusive of the skeleton!
Chapter Sixty Seven.
A Crew of Cannibals.
“Allons!” cried a black-bearded man, in whose emaciated frame it was not easy to recognise the once corpulent bully of the slave-ship,—the Frenchman, Le Gros. “Allons! messieurs! It’s time to try fortune again. Sacré! we must eat, or die!”
The question may be asked, What were these men to eat? There appeared to be no food upon the raft. There was none,—not a morsel of any kind that might properly be called meat for man. Nor had there been, ever since the second day after the departure of the raft from the side of the burning bark. A small box of sea-biscuits, that, when distributed, gave only two to each man, was all that had been saved in their hurried retreat from the decks of the Pandora. These had disappeared in a day. They had brought away water in greater abundance, and caught some since in their shirts, and on the spread sail,—nearly after the same fashion and in the same rain-storm that had afforded the well-timed supply to Ben Brace and his protégé.
But the stock derived from both sources was on the eve of being exhausted. Only a small ration or two to each man remained in the cask; but thirsty as most of them might be, they were suffering still more from the kindred appetite of hunger.
What did Le Gros mean when he said they must eat? What food was there on the raft, to enable them to avoid the terrible alternative appended to his proposal,—“eat, or die”! What had kept them from dying: since it was now many days, almost weeks, since they had swallowed the last morsel of biscuit so sparingly distributed amongst them?
The answer to all these interrogatories is one and the some. It is too fearful to be pronounced,—awful even to think of!