cast adrift the oars, shipped a pair, and--standing up
fisherman fashion, with my face toward the bow--paddled the boat to the
pile of wreckage whereon I had left Miss Onslow.

The sea had by this time gone down to such an extent that I had no
difficulty in putting the boat alongside the wreckage, taking the young
lady on board, and shoving clear again without damaging the boat in the
least. My clothes were by this time quite dry, and those of my
companion nearly so; we were therefore, comparatively speaking,
comfortable, excepting that we were both sensible of the possession of a
most healthy and hearty appetite, which we had no means of satisfying.
A casual remark by Miss Onslow upon this unpleasant feature of our
adventure set me thinking, with the result that before leaving our mass
of wreckage for good, I secured the signal halliards--to serve as a
fishing-line--together with a fair supply of other small cordage, the
main-royal--which I cut away from the wreckage to serve as a sort of
tent, to shelter my companion from the dew at night-time--and a small
spike nail or two, which, with considerable labour, I cut out of the
planking of the derelict that had brought disaster upon us. These last
I secured with the rather hazy idea that it might be possible for me to
file them down and convert them into fish-hooks with the aid of a small
file that formed one of the implements in my pocket-knife. Thus
provided, I shipped the boat's rudder and yoke, stepped the mast, set
the sails, and shoved off, my intention being to shape a course--as
nearly as I could hit it off--for Cape Town, in the hope that ere long
we might be fallen in with and picked up by some craft bound thither.
The boat, however, had scarcely begun to gather way when I espied, at no
very great distance, what I took to be a floating hencoop; and realising
that, if my conjecture happened to be correct, the coop would probably
be found to contain drowned poultry that, in our desperate situation,
would serve for food, I headed the boat for it. My surmise again proved
to be well founded; the object turned out to be a coop, and it contained
seventeen dead fowls, the whole of which I secured. And in gaining
possession of the poultry I found it necessary to break away two or
three of the slats or bars that formed the front of the coop, thus
discovering that they were secured to the body of the coop by long,
thin, wire nails, out of which I soon satisfied myself