evening shoes that neither tie nor untie. They said they felt safer
that way and there was an end of it.

Shard lay a course of South by West and they did ten knots that day,
the next day they did seven or eight and Shard hove to. Here he
intended to stop, they had huge supplies of fodder on board for the
oxen, for his men he had a pig or so, plenty of poultry, several sacks
of biscuits and ninety-eight oxen (for two were already eaten), and
they were only twenty miles from water. Here he said they would stay
till folks forgot their past, someone would invent something or some
new thing would turn up to take folks' minds off them and the ships he
had sunk: he forgot that there are men who are well paid to remember.

Half way between him and the oasis he established a little depot where
he buried his water-barrels. As soon as a barrel was empty he sent
half a dozen men to roll it by turns to the depot. This they would do
at night, keeping hid by day, and next night they would push on to the
oasis, fill the barrel and roll it back. Thus only ten miles away he
soon had a store of water, unknown to the thirstiest native of Africa,
from which he could safely replenish his tanks at will. He allowed his
men to sing and even within reason to light fires. Those were jolly
nights while the rum held out; sometimes they saw gazelles watching
them curiously, sometimes a lion went by over the sand, the sound of
his roar added to their sense of the security of their ship; all round
them level, immense lay the Sahara: "This is better than an English
prison," said Captain Shard.

And still the dead calm lasted, not even the sand whispered at night
to little winds; and when the rum gave out and it looked like trouble,
Shard reminded them what little use it had been to them when it was
all they had and the oxen wouldn't look at it.

And the days wore on with singing, and even dancing at times, and at
nights round a cautious fire in a hollow of sand with only one man on
watch they told tales of the sea. It was all a relief after arduous
watches and sleeping by the guns, a rest to strained nerves and eyes;
and all agreed, for all that they missed their rum, that the best
place for a ship like theirs was the land.

This was in Latitude 23 North, Longitude 4 East, where, as I have
said, a ship's broadside was heard for the first time and the last. It
happened this way.

They had been there several weeks and had eaten perhaps ten or a