to part with." Captain Blow
then told me to put an eighteen-gallon cask in the port-quarter boat,
and go away to the barque with it. "They'll not fill it," said he,
"but a half'll be better than a quarter, and a quarter'll be good
enough; for we stand to pick up more as we go along."

I had called to two of the English sailors, named Mike Jackson and
Thomas Fallows, to get into the boat, when the cask had been placed in
her; and when I had entered her the darkeys lowered us; we unhooked
and shoved off. There was a pleasant breeze of wind blowing; it blew
hot, as though it came straight from the inside of an oven, the door
of which had been suddenly opened; the sky had the sort of glazed
dimness of the human eye in fever; but right overhead it was of a
copperish dazzle where the roasting orb of the sun was. I could not
see a speck of cloud anywhere, which rendered what followed the more
amazing to my mind for the suddenness of it.

The two vessels at the first of their speaking had been tolerably
close together, but some time had been spent in routing up the cask
and getting it into the boat, and setting ourselves afloat, so that at
the moment of our shoving off--spite of the topsail of each vessel
being to the mast--the space had widened between them, till I daresay
it covered pretty nearly a mile. The wind was at west-nor'-west, and
the barque bore on the lee quarter of the _Hindoo Merchant_. The great
heat put a languor into the arms of our two seamen, and the oars rose
and fell slowly and weakly. Jackson said to me: "I hope," said he,
"they 'll be able to spare us a bite of ship's bread. Our 'n is no
better than sawdust, and if it wasn't for the worms in it," said he,
"blast me if there 'd be any nutriment in it at all. Them Cingalese
ought to ha' moored their island off the Chinese coast. They 'd have
grown rich with teaching the Johnnies more tricks than they 're master
of, at plundering sailors."

"The _Hindoo Merchant's_ bread isn't up to much, Fallows," said I,
"but this is no atmosphere to talk of bread in. What 's aboard will
carry us to the Hooghley. It is water we have to fix our minds on."

We drew alongside of the tall barque, and the master, after looking
over the rail, asked me to step aboard and drink a glass with him in
his cabin, "for," says he, "this is no part of the ocean to be thirsty
in," and he then gave directions for the cask to be got out of the
boat, and a drink of rum and water to be h