er on strike some other island to their fancy.

By stealth they managed to stow in the boat a couple of small breakers
of water, holding together sixteen gallons, and the forecastle bread
barge with biscuits enough for three meals a day per man for ten days.
They managed also to steal four hams, and each man brought pipes,
tobacco, and matches. A harpoon with some line, an old galley
frying-pan, mast, sail and oars, and some blankets completed the
equipment For they took no compass, though they made several attempts to
get at one slung in the cabin, and tried at first to take one out of the
poop binnacle; but the officer of the watch on deck was too wide awake
for them to risk that, and the cabin compass was screwed to the roof
close to the skipper's berth; and so the old man who was their leader,
old sailor and whaler as he was, actually gave up the idea of taking a
compass, and these people without more ado, one night slipped over the
side into the whaleboat, cut the painter, and by daylight the boat was
out of sight of land and of the ship. They were afloat upon the Pacific,
running six or seven miles before a north-east breeze and expecting
to sight land in less than a week, and were already anticipating the
freedom and luxury of island life in store for them.

Three days later it fell calm, and they had to take to the oars. The sun
was intensely hot, the water a sheet of glass reflecting back upon them
the ball of fire overhead. Now and again a cats-paw would ripple across
the plain of water, but there were no clouds, there was no sight of
land. They kept on pulling. For three, for four days--a week--for ten
days--they tugged at the oars, except when a favouring breeze came. The
water was reduced to a few pints, the food to a few days' half-rations.
Their limbs were cramped so that they could not move from their places
in the boat, their bodies were becoming covered with sores; and the wind
had now died away entirely, the sea was without a ripple, and for ever
shone above them the fierce, relentless sun.

Gradually it had dawned upon them that they were lost--that perhaps they
had run past Samoa. The first eagerness of their adventure gave place
to despair, and by degrees their despair grew to madness of a more awful
kind.

On the fifteenth day there appeared to the south and east a low,
dark-grey cloud. "Land at last!" was the unspoken thought in each man's
heart as he looked at his comrade, but feared to voice