rascal, who only looked up and grinned and chattered as much as to say,
`I want my breakfast as much as you do.' My voice awoke his masters,
who starting up, saw what their friend was about. The rascal had
already eaten two of our precious oranges, and had just begun a third.
When Mr Rogers took it from him, Master Spider seemed to think he was
very hardly treated, and grinned, and chattered, and tried to get hold
of it again.

"`There's no use punishing the poor brute,' said the young gentleman;
`he only acted according to his nature, and of course he thinks that he
has as much right to the fruit as we have, only he ought not to have
taken more than his proper share.'

"Those two oranges, with some biscuit, served us for breakfast, and
after that, except the remainder of the wine and some rum, we hadn't a
drop of liquid to drink. The sea was as calm and the sun as hot as the
day before, and we all soon became fearfully thirsty. Unable to bear it
longer I again went below to have another search for water. I looked
into every locker; I hunted through the hold, and examined every hole
and corner in the forepeak, but to no purpose. I discovered, however,
what made me more uneasy than ever--that the water was leaking in
through the deck. It came in very slowly, but I had marked a line when
I was down before, and I found since then that it had risen nearly half
an inch. I couldn't hide from myself that the vessel was sinking. I
said nothing about it to the young gentlemen when, having shut the
hatch, I climbed back to my place. It went to my heart to hear them
still joking and laughing, in spite of their hunger and thirst, when I
thought that in two or three days at furthest their merry voices would
be silenced by death. They didn't keep up their joking long, for as the
sun got higher the heat became greater, and roasted out their spirits,
as it were, poor fellows, in spite of what each one in turn did to keep
them up. Spider was the only one of the party who was as merry as ever,
for the heat didn't hurt him, and he kept frisking about to the end of
his chain, trying, when he thought he was not watched, to get at the
basket to see if there were any more oranges or any other fruit to his
taste in it.

"`Well, Needham, don't you think matters will mend soon?' says Mr
Rogers to me, seeing that I had been sitting silent and downcast for a
long time. `We surely shall have a breeze before the evening, and some
cra