n found rolled up on the spars were spread out to
dry; and the provisions and articles of clothing, which might be useful,
laid together on one side. The negroes worked willingly and showed much
intelligence; before the evening closed everything which might be
available was secured, and the waves now only tossed about lifeless
forms, and the small fragments of timber which could not be serviceable.

It would occupy too much time were we to detail all the proceedings of
Francisco and the negroes for the space of four days, during which they
laboured hard. Necessity is truly the mother of invention, and many were
the ingenious resources of the party before they could succeed in
forming a raft large enough to carry them and their provisions, with a
mast and sail well secured. At length it was accomplished; and on the
fifth day Francisco and his men embarked, and, having pushed clear of
the bank with poles, they were at last able to hoist their sail to a
fine breeze, and steer for the coast before the wind at the rate of
about three miles an hour. But it was not until they had gained half a
mile from the bank that they were no longer annoyed by the dreadful
smell arising from the putrefaction of so many bodies, for to bury them
all would have been a work of too great time. The last two days of their
remaining on the island, the effluvia had become so powerful as to be a
source of the greatest horror and disgust even to the negroes.

But before night, when the raft was about eight leagues from the
sand-bank, it fell calm, and continued so for the next day, when a
breeze sprang up from the south-east, to which they trimmed their sail
with their head to the northward.

This wind, and the course steered, sent them off from the land, but
there was no help for it; and Francisco felt grateful that they had such
an ample supply of provisions and water as to enable them to yield to a
few days' contrary wind without danger of want. But the breeze continued
steady and fresh, and they were now crossing the Bight of Benin; the
weather was fine and the sea smooth; the flying-fish rose in shoals and
dropped down into the raft, which still forced its way through the water
to the northward.

Thus did Francisco and his negro crew remain for a fortnight floating on
the wide ocean, without any object meeting their view. Day after day it
was the same dreary 'sky and water,' and by the reckoning of Francisco
they could not be far from the lan