Hour after hour went slowly by, for we had no time for talking to make it appear shorter. Still the night did come to an end at last, but there were no signs of the gale abating. As soon as the sun rose we looked out eagerly on all sides for land. Nothing broke the uniform line of the horizon except the foam-topped seas, which rose up tumultuously between us and it. We were driving all this time, it must be remembered, to the southward at the rate, the mate said, of two knots an hour, so that if we had been near Guam when the gale came on we were being driven farther and farther from it, and it would be a hard matter to regain the island.
We had taken nothing during the night, and we now all cried out for food. The store of salt fish we had remaining was scarcely eatable, for the salt had been washed out of it, and it was becoming bad. What we had smoked was a little better, but that also was almost spoilt, yet such as it was we were glad to have a portion with an onion apiece, and a small mug half full of water. The mate would give us no more.
“What I do is for the good of all of us, lads,” he said. “I can’t tell when we may make the land, or what provisions we may find when we get there.”
Horner sang out, “We had some biscuit. What has become of that? Why don’t you let us have a piece for our breakfasts?”
“Because the biscuits will keep longer than anything else, and are all we may have to depend upon,” answered the doctor, who had got them under him in the stern-sheets, and had been trying from the first to keep them as free from water as possible.
We had till now fancied that we had an abundance of food, but some had been washed overboard and some had been completely spoilt, so we found to our dismay that we had a very small quantity remaining. Horner now began to complain bitterly of hunger and thirst, declaring that if he didn’t get some food he must die.
Jim and I endeavoured to cheer him up. It was not a matter to joke about; indeed I was myself feeling the pangs of hunger and getting weaker and less able to work, though I did my best. Jim kept up better than I did. We had not much time to be thinking, however, for we were compelled to be constantly baling the greater part of the day.
Towards evening the sun broke through the western clouds, sending his rays athwart the troubled ocean, and tinging the seas with a ruddy hue, while his heat dried our wet clothes.
Soon afterwards the wind began to drop, but the seas still ran so high that the mate thought it prudent to hang on some time longer to our raft. However, they no longer broke on board as they had been doing, and we had better hopes than on the previous night that we should see another sun rise. We had been awake so long that none of us were able to keep our eyes open, and I suspect that at times every person in the boat was fast asleep. I know for my part that I must have dozed through the greater part of the night, for I was awakened by hearing the mate’s voice saying—
“Now, lads, we will get the raft on board and make sail.”