were drawn and used almost with fatal effect.

Strange time for disagreement and deadly conflict!

Even wild animals--the fiercest beasts of prey--when under the influence
of a common danger will yield up the ferocity of their nature. Not so
these wicked men--their vile passions in this dread hour seemed only to
become stronger and more malignant!

Their quarrels were about the merest trifles--the serving out of the
water, the rum, the supposition of some one that he was not getting fair
play in his allowance--but so frequent had they become, that they
themselves grew to be a monotony. Every hour a fierce brawl disturbed
the deep repose and otherwise breathless silence that characterised the
intervals between.

If these incidents had grown monotonous and no longer failed to interest
me, there was one upon the eve of occurring that was well calculated to
produce within me an interest of the most powerful kind--calculated to
stir my soul to its very utmost emotion.

I have said that this incident was on the eve of occurring--it was a
hideous purpose already matured, though kept secret from my companion
and myself. Neither Brace nor I had the slightest suspicion of it until
the hour in which it was openly declared.

CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE.

It was probably on the sixth day after parting from the wreck--though I
am not certain about the day--that the horrid design reached its
development. It had been hatching for a while before, and upon that day
came to a crisis.

It was now several days since food had been tasted by any one--the two
biscuits each had been long since eaten--most of them at the moment of
being given out. Of course every one upon the raft was suffering the
pangs of hunger, and had been enduring them until the appetite had
reached the extremity of painfulness.

Some looked emaciated, with eyes deeply sunken, and cheeks bony and
hollow. Others, strange to say, had a fat, bloated appearance; but this
must have arisen from swelling, or some unnatural cause--it could not be
that famine had given them flesh. All--one and all--had that peculiar
expression about the eyes, and around the mouth, that may be noticed in
the visage of a hungry dog, or still more perceptibly in a half-starved
wolf.

About this period there seemed to be some secret intelligence among
them--not all of them--but among those who acted as leaders--for even in
their reduced condition, there were those of stronger body and mor