o do, and that
is to pike out for water as fast as we can."

"Where?" asked Denton.

"Well," I argued, "I don't believe there's any water about this bay.
Maybe there was when that chart was made. It was a long time ago. And
any way, the old pirate was a sailor, and no plainsman, and maybe he
mistook rainwater for a spring. We've looked around this end of the
bay. The chances are we'd use up two or three days exploring around
the other, and then wouldn't be as well off as we are right now."

"Which way?" asked Denton again, mighty brief.

"Well," said I, "there's one thing I've always noticed in case of folks
held up by the desert: they generally go wandering about here and there
looking for water until they die not far from where they got lost. And
usually they've covered a heap of actual distance."

"That's so," agreed Denton.

"Now, I've always figured that it would be a good deal better to start
right out for some particular place, even if it's ten thousand miles
away. A man is just as likely to strike water going in a straight line
as he is going in a circle; and then, besides, he's getting somewhere."

"Correct," said Denton,

"So," I finished, "I reckon we'd better follow the coast south and try
to get to Mollyhay."

"How far is that?" asked Schwartz.

"I don't rightly know. But somewheres between three and five hundred
miles, at a guess."

At that he fell to glowering and grooming with himself, brooding over
what a hard time it was going to be. That is the way with a German.
First off he's plumb scared at the prospect of suffering anything, and
would rather die right off than take long chances. After he gets into
the swing of it, he behaves as well as any man.

We took stock of what we had to depend on. The total assets proved to
be just three pairs of legs. A pot of coffee had been on the fire, but
that villain had kicked it over when he left. The kettle of beans was
there, but somehow we got the notion they might have been poisoned, so
we left them. I don't know now why we were so foolish--if poison was
his game, he'd have tried it before--but at that time it seemed
reasonable enough. Perhaps the horror of the morning's work, and the
sight of the brittle-brown mountains, and the ghastly yellow glare of
the sun, and the blue waves racing by outside, and the big strong wind
that blew through us so hard that it seemed to blow empty our souls,
had turned our judgment. Anyway, we left