"Better hold back on the rations and water," they warned us. "We ain't rescued yet."
But we laughed them down. We felt sure some ship must have caught our S. O. S. the night before. It stood to reason help was hurryin' toward us.
We took turns scannin' the horizon. It wasn't hard, because the sky was cloudy. We didn't say so, but it's hopin' we were that there wouldn't be a squall. It wasn't long before the water grew choppy and a mist came up. Some of the men were glooms for fair.
"Fog risin'. We couldn't see a ship if she was alongside of us," they growled.
The boys wouldn't be downed.
"We'll shout just to show them we're here," they said, and, at intervals all that long night, their voices rang out, but no answer did we get.
Along toward mornin' it began to rain in earnest. We caught the raindrops in our mouths. We decided to start economizin' in water. It cleared up the third day and the sun came out. It burned our wet faces. Some of the men slept, but most of us kept a lookout. Help must be comin' soon. We didn't know in what direction land lay. Sure, we'd pull toward the north, then hold a council and decide it was the wrong way after all, so we'd start off due east. But we didn't row as hard as we had the first day—not by a long sight. Some of the men were against goin' away too far from the place where our ship went down.
"If we'd stayed around there we'd have been picked up by now."
The men were gettin' sulky, blamin' each other.