On we went, the swell rolling under us and giving us a twisting motion. Sometimes we would be in a long hollow where the breeze would fail. Then, as we rose sternwrard, the little sail would fill, and away we would go, racing along the slanting crest of the long sea, the foam rushing from the boat's sides with a hopeful, hissing sound, until the swell would gain on us and go under, leaving the boat with her bow pointing up the receding slope and her headway almost gone, to drop into the following hollow and repeat the action.
The English sailor who had drank the water was now stone dead. Johnson gave me a look, and I began a conversation with Miss Sackett, endeavoring to engage her attention. A splash from forward made her look, and she saw what had happened. Then she turned and, looking up at me, placed her soft little hand on mine which lay upon the tiller.
"You are very good to me, Mr. Rolling, but I can stand suffering as well as a man," she said. "I thank you just the same." Then her eyes filled and she turned away her face. I found something to fix at the rudder head, and when I was through she was looking over the blue water where the lumpy trade clouds showed above the horizon's rim.
As the day wore on, the hunger of the men began to show itself. Jenks kept his wrinkled, leather face to the northward, looking steadily for a sail, but the other sailors glanced aft several times, and I noticed the strange glare of the eye which tells of the hungry animal. Some of these men had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours. One big, heavy-looking young sailor glanced back several times from the clew of his eye at the girl sitting aft. But I fixed my gaze upon him so steadily that he shifted his seat and looked forward.
Late in the afternoon some of the men insisted on eating the beef, and it was served to them. No ill effects followed, so all hands took their ration. This satisfied them for the time being, but I knew the thirst which must surely follow. I had been adrift in an open boat before in the Pacific. There had been sixteen men at the start, and at the end of four weeks of horror seven had been picked up to tell a tale which would make the blood curdle. The memory of this made me sick with fear and anxiety.
Johnson felt so much better from his meal that he stood in the bow with his little monkey-like figure braced against the mast, his legs on the gunwales. He said jokingly that he'd raise a sail before eight bells in the afternoon. Suddenly he cried out:—
"Sail dead ahead, sir!"
"'Tis no jokin' matter," growled Chips, angrily. "Shet yer head, ye monkey, afore I heave ye over th' side."
Johnson turned fiercely upon him.
"Jokin', you lummax! Slant yer eye forrads, an' don't sit there a-lookin' at yerself," he snarled.