here they
floated and drifted and gave way to their despair?

Towards the evening of this day Dick got very weak.

Strange to say, although brought up in the country and accustomed,
probably, all his early life, at any rate, to exposure and hard living,
Dick was not able to bear up against their present sufferings by any
means so well as Bob, who, on this third night of their being adrift,
was yet full of vitality!

It was in vain for him, though, to try and reanimate Dick, who,
hopeless, and almost helpless, lay down in the bottom of the boat, only
asking to be left alone to die.

"I'm a-dying, Master Bob," he gasped out faintly, when Bob tried to
raise him up. "Let me be; let me be!"

"Dying, nonsense," repeated Bob, pretending to joke about it; though,
truth to say, he felt in little joking mood then, being almost as weak
as his companion. "You are worth twenty dead men yet, as the old
Captain would say!"

But, in spite of all his encouraging words, Dick grew gradually weaker
and weaker; until, towards midnight, his breathing became so very faint
that Bob could hardly feel it, though kneeling down close beside him and
with his face touching that of poor Dick.

"I'm a-dying--Master Bob," he whispered, in such low accents that Bob
had to bend down his ear close to his mouth to hear what he said. "I
bees--a-dying--Mas-ter--Bob. I knows--I--be! I--hears--the--h'angels--
a-flapping on their wings! I knows they be a-coming--for--me! God--
bless--'ee, Mas-ter--Bob! Ah, if--'ee--ever--get--'shore--'gain--tell--
Cap'--I--didn't--mean--no--'arm!"

Soon after faltering out these broken words, Dick fell back insensible
in the bottom of the boat.

"Oh, Dick, poor Dick, good Dick!" sobbed out Bob, throwing himself down
beside him on the floor of the boat's little cabin and bursting into an
agony of tears. "It is I who have killed you. But for me, you would
never have been here at all! Poor, brave Dick, you saved my life, and
in return I've killed you!"

The torture of mind in which he now was on seeing, as he thought, Dick
dead before him, coupled with all he had already gone through, but of
which he had taken little heed while he had his comrade to console, now
coming together affected Bob's mind.

He began to wander in delirium, imagining himself not only safe ashore,
but in his London home, amid all the surroundings to which he had been
accustomed before coming to Southsea and to this sad extremity.