his hope. And
presently the cloud grew darker and more clearly defined, and one of the
men--the next oldest to the author of all their miseries--fell upon
his weak and trembling knees, and raised his hands in thankfulness
and prayer to the Almighty. Alas! it was not land, but the ominous
forerunner of the fierce and sweeping mid-equatorial gale which lay
veiled behind. In less than half an hour it came upon and smote them
with savage fury, and the little boat was running before a howling gale
and a maddened, foam-whipped sea.

And then it happened that, ill and suffering as he was from the agonies
of hunger and thirst, the heroic nature of old "Boston Ned" came
out, and his bold sailor's heart cheered and encouraged his wretched,
despairing companions. All that night, and for the greater part of
the following day, he stood in the stern-sheets, grasping the bending
steer-oar as the boat swayed and surged along before the gale, and
constantly watching lest she should broach to and smother in the
roaring seas; the others lay in the bottom, feebly baling out the
water, encouraged, urged, and driven to that exertion by the gallant old
American seaman.

Towards noon the wind moderated, in the afternoon it died away
altogether, and again the boat lay rising and falling to the long
Pacific swell, and "Boston Ned" flung his exhausted frame down in the
stern-sheets and slept.

Again the blood-red sun leapt from a sea of glassy smoothness--for the
swell had subsided during the night--and again the wretched men locked
into each other's dreadful faces and mutely asked what was to be done.
How should they head the boat? Without a compass they might as well
steer one way as another, for none of them knew even approximately the
course for the nearest land; search the cloudless vault of blue above,
or scan the shimmering sea-rim till their aching eyes dropped from out
their hollowing sockets, there was no clue.

Twenty days out the last particle of food and water had been consumed,
and though the boat was now steering as near westward as old Ned could
judge, before a gentle south-east trade, madness and despair were coming
quickly upon them, and on the twenty-third day two of the five miserable
creatures began to drink copiously of salt water--the drink of Death.

Renton, though he had suffered to the bitter full from the agonies
of body and mind endured by his shipmates, did not yield to this
temptation; and by a merciful provid