The sun went down and some clouds came up behind the horizon to receive the glowing disc. These spread themselves slowly over the heavens, albeit the sea remained breathlessly calm; and thinking that the wind was coming up that way, the poor sufferers turned their eyes wildly and eagerly towards the west, hoping with a desolate hope for the vessel that was to rescue them, but which no day brought.
When the night fell, Winyard began to sing in a strange husky voice; but his tones soon died out, and then came the small weak cry of, “Mamma, I am thirsty! give me some water!” from the little boy, wounding the ear with an edge of agony in the stillness and the gloom.
Presently a soft sigh of wind came from the west, which backed the sail. Holdsworth put the boat’s head round until the sail filled, and then hauled the sheet aft, meaning to lay close to the wind, that they might sooner encounter the ship that the wind was to bring. The air sank into a calm again; but another puff followed which made the water gurgle, and it was plain that a breeze was coming, by the clouds which were drifting eastwards. The wind freshened and then became steady, and the boat, bending to the weight of the full sail, stirred the water into fire, which flashed and vanished in her wake.
It mattered little which way Holdsworth steered the boat; but let him head her as he would, there was always the haunting sense upon him that he was speeding away from the ship that would rescue them; that by pointing yonder, or yonder, or yonder, a vessel would be encountered. The breeze and the movement of the boat revived Winyard, who lolled over on the lee side, finding relief in letting his hands trail through the water. The boy had ceased his complaints, and lay sleeping along the thwart, with his head on his mother’s knee. Johnson also slept.
The thirst that had tormented Holdsworth during the afternoon had now in some measure abated. There were four or five bottles of rum still left in the stern locker, and, hoping to hit upon some means to deal with the sufferings with which they were threatened by the absence of water, he soaked a piece of biscuit in the spirit and tasted it. But he at once perceived that no relief was to be obtained by this expedient, but that, on the contrary, the spirit would irritate the throat and increase the dryness. He threw the piece of biscuit away, and began to think over all the stories he had ever heard of men who had suffered from thirst in boats at sea, that he might recollect any one way they adopted for diminishing their torments. He had been shipmates with a man, in one of his earlier voyages, who, together with three other men, had been miraculously rescued by a vessel, after they had been at sea in an open boat exactly twenty-one days, during which they had drifted above seven hundred miles from the spot at which their ship had gone down. Holdsworth could only remember two of the expedients they resorted to when maddened with hunger and thirst: one was, tearing off pieces of their shirts and chewing them; the other, cutting wounds in their arms and sucking the blood. This last was a remedy from which he recoiled with horror; nor were his sufferings so great just then as to tempt him to try the other.
“Master!” called out Winyard, in a husky voice, “what longitude do you reckon we’re in?”
“We were in twenty-eight west when the ship went down, and I doubt if we are many miles distant from the same place.”
“Ain’t there no chance of our sighting a ship, master?”
“Yes, every chance.”