“About nine-fifteen a. m. we launched the yawl. But what was the use? We just did it on a chance, anyway. That yawl had hardly hit the water when she was smashed to pieces against the side.
“Big sticks of lumber from our jettisoned cargo now slammed the barkentine hard. At ten a. m. the starboard side opened up. That was some day. At eight-thirty p. m. the foremast jammed itself through the bottom; a big part of the foredeck drifted away with it. We were just simply going to pieces. We didn’t know where to lash the women, because we couldn’t say what part would go away next.
“The lumber in the hold was just raising hell. The morning of the next day, at three-thirty o’clock, the stern broke off entirely. At five-thirty a. m. the main deck splintered and so did the after house. A half hour later we made a raft out of the roof of it. We all got onto it, lashing the women. They lay flat and had a hard job to keep from choking, because the waves were hitting us hard.
“At seven-thirty a. m. we sighted the main deck, and started out for it. It took us two hours to paddle. We used pieces of the lumber that drifted to us. When we all climbed on board, we made fast the raft to it. That was the last thing we did, because at eleven p. m., after three days and nights on the drifting main deck, the thing bu’sted to pieces.
“That was the only time the women showed excitement. They didn’t want to get back on that raft. The little gal, Miss Larrock, she lives in Boston, like I do. She said to me: ‘Mate, we will never see Boston again.’ I said: ‘Oh, yes. Don’t you give up, little gal, not much.’ She laughed—it sounded like she was laughing—and she said something she read some time out of a book. ‘Well, mate, we will die with good and true hearts.’
“Well, we didn’t die. The Ward steamer Manzanillo came along at ten-thirty o’clock the morning after the main deck bu’sted to pieces, and we can thank Warner, the cook, that she saw us. He grabbed the code flag R when we left the vessel, and we stuck it up on a piece of lumber on the raft. It is a red flag, with a yellow cross, and they could see it better than most any flag.”
Olsen turned to the cook and slapped him hard between the shoulders. “Freddy, old boy, we never missed a meal, did we?”
Warner winced and acquiesced.
“Yes, sir,” continued the mate, “the twelve of us lived for six days on that measly two-pound can of tripe and three tins of blueberries. Freddie, here, opened the can of tripe with his teeth and an old fork. Then he speared a piece at a time on a wire and handed it around three times a day.
“And, by gosh, the skipper looked at every piece that was swallowed. He said: ‘I caution you fellas to go light on that tripe, because we might be a long time here. One of the three cans of berries was given to four of us. We had a three-gallon keg of dirty fresh water with us on the raft, and it tasted fine.”