the tortures of the damned.

Reader, have _you_ ever experienced the torment of thirst while exposed
in an open boat to the blazing rays of the pitiless sun? You have not?
Then thank God for it, and earnestly pray that you never may; for none
can realise or even faintly imagine the intensity of the suffering but
those who have borne it.

The women, from whom it was of course impossible to conceal the
circumstance that May was receiving more than her own share of food and
water, were anxious to follow the example of their male companions by
also setting apart a portion of their own allowance for the use of the
child, but this was at once decidedly vetoed; yet they were not so
easily to be deterred from their generous disposition, and many a sip
and many a morsel which could ill be spared did the poor little child
receive from their sympathetic and loving hands.

"After the storm comes the calm," says the proverb, and its truth was
fully borne out in the present instance.

On the fourth day after casting off from the wreckage the wind began to
drop, and by sunset it had fallen so light that the launch had barely
steerage-way. This was still another misfortune, for if the calm
continued it would seriously delay their progress and thereby protract
their sufferings. Next to a gale of wind, indeed, a calm and its
consequent delay was what they had most to dread, for they were in a
part of the ocean little frequented by craft of any description, except
a stray whaler now and then, and their only reasonable hope of salvation
rested upon the possibility of their being able to reach land before
starvation and thirst overcame them.

Mr Bowles had the first watch, and Bob was posted at the now all but
useless helm. The wind had subsided until it was faint as the breath of
a sleeping infant, and the boat's sails flapped gently against the masts
as she rode with a scarcely perceptible swinging motion over the long
stately slow-moving swell which followed her. The vast blue-black dome
of the heavens above was devoid of the faintest trace of cloud, and the
countless stars which spangled the immeasurable vault beamed down upon
the tiny waif with a soft and mellow splendour which was repeated in the
dark bosom of the scarcely ruffled ocean, where the reflected starbeams
mingled, far down in its mysterious depths, with occasional faint gleams
and flashes of pale greenish phosphorescent light. The thin golden
crescent of the yo