For three days, on the bare mast, exposed to the burning heat of the sun, without food or water, and hope dying in their hearts, Willis and Mateo lived. Their sufferings were awful: daily their strength failed: and Willis, who was weaker than Mateo, from loss of blood, and stiff from his wound, would have fallen off the mast, had not his mate taken the belt from around the captain’s waist, and bound him on with it: and feeling his own strength failing, he got to the other end of the spar, propped himself in between the cross-trees, and took a long look around the horizon, to see if there was not a sail in sight; but no such blessing greeted his eyes.
They were alone on the great and boundless solitude of the wide ocean—out of reach of all succor—and thus they floated on.
——
CHAPTER XIII.
The web of our life is of a
Mingled yarn, good and ill together.
All’s Well that Ends Well.
“El Diamente,” to avoid the bad weather, usually met with in the Gulf Stream, had taken the eastern passage, and, after clearing the Bahamas, had held her course about east north-east, and getting far to the eastward, was rapidly ploughing toward her destination.
She had been fortunate in having fair winds and good weather, and the voyage to Don Manuel and his family had been a very pleasant one. In the security and calmness of this passage, Clara had nearly forgotten the dreadful horrors and mischances that can take place at sea, and which she had experienced on her former voyage.
It was after sundown, the day had been intensely warm, and Clara and Francisca were sitting on the ship’s high poop-deck, enjoying the pleasant, and now cool air, and admiring the placid beauty of the smooth sea.