These latter kept
well to the other side of the island and subsisted in much the
same manner as their white neighbours.

At the end of a week, all hands were troubled with indigestion
and McGuffey developed a low fever. They had lost much flesh and
were a white, haggard-looking trio. On the afternoon of the tenth
day on the island the sky clouded up and Mr. Gibney predicted a
williwaw. Captain Scraggs inquired feebly if it was good to eat.

That night it rained, and to the great joy of the marooned
mariners Mr. Gibney discovered, in the centre of a big sandstone
rock, a natural reservoir that held about ten gallons of water.
They drank to repletion and felt their strength return a
thousand-fold. Tabu-Tabu and the king came into camp about this
time, and pleaded for a ration of water. Mr. Gibney, swearing
horribly at them, granted their request, and the king, in his
gratitude, threw himself at the commodore's feet and kissed them.
But Mr. Gibney was not to be deceived, and after furnishing them
with a supply of water in cocoanut calabashes, he ordered them to
their own side of the island.

On the eighteenth day the last drop of water was gone, and on the
twenty-second day the last of the cocoanuts disappeared. The
prospects of more rain were not bright. The gooneys were becoming
shy and distrustful and the syndicate was experiencing more and
more difficulty, not only in killing them, but in eating them.
McGuffey, who had borne up uncomplainingly, was shaking with
fever and hardly able to stagger down the beach to look for
turtle eggs. The syndicate was sick, weak, and emaciated almost
beyond recognition, and on the twenty-fifth day Captain Scraggs
fainted twice. On the twenty-sixth day McGuffey crawled into the
shadow of a stunted mimosa bush and started to pray!

To Mr. Gibney this was an infallible sign that McGuffey was now
delirious. In the shadow of a neighbouring bush Captain Scraggs
babbled of steam beer in the Bowhead saloon, and the commodore,
stifling his own agony, watched his comrades until their lips and
tongues, parched with thirst, refused longer to produce even a
moan, and silence settled over the dismal camp.

It was the finish. The commodore knew it, and sat with bowed head
in his gaunt arms, wondering, wondering. Slowly his body began to
sway; he muttered something, slid forward on his face, and lay
still. And as he lay there on the threshold of the unknown he
dreamed that the _Maggie II_ came