We'd no food nor drink but a tin o'
preserved pears; Lord knows how that got there; but 'twas soon done.
Pete had a small compass, a gimcrack affair hangin' to his watch-chain,
an' we pulled by it west-sou'-west towards the nighest land, which we
made out must be some one or another o' the Leeward Islands; but 'twas
more to keep ourselves busy than for aught else: the boat was so low in
the water that even with the Trade to help us, we made but a mile an
hour, an' had to be balin' all day and all night. The third day, as the
sun grew hot, two o' the men went mad. We had to pitch 'em overboard an'
beat 'em off wi' the oars till they drowned: else they'd ha' sunk the
boat. This seemed to hang on Pete's mind, in a way. All the next night
he talked light-headed; said he could hear the dead men hailin' their
names. About midnight he jumped after 'em--to fetch 'em, he said--an'
was drowned. He took his compass with him, but that didn't make much
odds. The boat was lighter now, an' we hadn' to bale. Pretty soon I got
too weak to notice how the men went.
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