o
bake bread. We couldn't go below much, fur there was a pretty good
swell on the sea, an' things was floatin' about so's to make it
dangerous. But we fished out a piece of canvas, which we rigged up
ag'in' the stump of the mainmast so that we could have somethin' that
we could sit down an' grumble under. What struck us all the hardest
was that the bark was loaded with a whole cargo of jolly things to eat,
which was just as good as ever they was, fur the water couldn't git
through the tin cans in which they was all put up, an' here we was with
nothin' to live on but them salted biscuit. There wasn't no way of
gittin' at any of the ship's stores, or any of the fancy prog, fur
everythin' was stowed away tight under six or seven feet of water, an'
pretty nigh all the room that was left between decks was filled up with
extry spars, lumber, boxes, an' other floatin' stuff. All was
shiftin', an' bumpin', an' bangin' every time the vessel rolled.

"As I said afore, Tom was second mate, an' I was bo's'n. Says I to
Tom, `The thing we've got to do is to put up some kind of a spar with a
rag on it fur a distress flag, so that we'll lose no time bein' took
off.' `There's no use a-slavin' at anythin' like that,' says Tom, `fur
we've been blowed off the track of traders, an' the more we work the
hungrier we'll git, an' the sooner will them biscuit be gone.'

"Now when I heared Tom say this I sot still an' began to consider.
Bein' second mate, Tom was, by rights, in command of this craft. But
it was easy enough to see that if he commanded there'd never be nothin'
fur Andy an' me to do. All the grit he had in him he'd used up in
holdin' on durin' that typhoon. What he wanted to do now was to make
himself comfortable till the time come for him to go to Davy Jones's
locker--an' thinkin', most likely, that Davy couldn't make it any
hotter fur him than it was on that deck, still in latitood nothin' at
all, fur we'd been blowed along the line pretty nigh due west. So I
calls to Andy, who was busy turnin' over the biscuits on the deck.
`Andy,' says I, when he had got under the canvas, `we's goin' to have a
'lection fur skipper. Tom, here, is about played out. He's one
candydate, an' I'm another. Now, who do you vote fur? An' mind yer
eye, youngster, that you don't make no mistake.' `I vote fur you' says
Andy. `Carried unanermous!' says I. `An' I want you to take notice
that I'm cap'n of what's left of the Mary Auguster, a