It is
not my intention to relate (if I can avoid it) such circumstances
appertaining to our doleful condition as have been better told in many
other narratives of the kind than I can be expected to tell them. I will
only note, in so many passing words, that day after day and night after
night, we received the sea upon our backs to prevent it from swamping the
boat; that one party was always kept baling, and that every hat and cap
among us soon got worn out, though patched up fifty times, as the only
vessels we had for that service; that another party lay down in the
bottom of the boat, while a third rowed; and that we were soon all in
boils and blisters and rags.
The other boat was a source of such anxious interest to all of us that I
used to wonder whether, if we were saved, the time could ever come when
the survivors in this boat of ours could be at all indifferent to the
fortunes of the survivors in that. We got out a tow-rope whenever the
weather permitted, but that did not often happen, and how we two parties
kept within the same horizon, as we did, He, who mercifully permitted it
to be so for our consolation, only knows.
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