e, devoured it with as
much seeming relish as if it had been ox-beef. His example prevailed
with the rest of us, one after another, to taste and eat; and as
there had been a heavy dew or rain in the night, and we had spread out
everything we had of linen and woollen to receive it, we were a little
refreshed by wringing our clothes and sipping what came from them; after
which we covered them up from the sun, stowing them all close together
to keep in the moisture, which served us to suck at for two days after,
a little and a little at a time; for now we were in greater distress for
water than for meat. It has surprised me, many times since, to think how
we could make so light a thing of eating our fellow creature just dead
before our eyes; but I will assure you, when we had once tasted, we
looked on the blessing to be so great, that we cut and eat with as
little remorse as we should have had for feeding on the best meat in
an English market; and most certainly, when this corpse had failed,
if another had not dropped by fair means, we should have used foul by
murdering one of our number as a supply for the rest.

Water, as I said before, to moisten our mouths, was now our greatest
hardship, for every man had so often drank his own, that we voided
scarce anything but blood, and that but a few drops at a time; our
mouths and tongues were quite flayed with drought, and our teeth just
fallen from our jaws; for though we had tried, by placing all the
dead men's jackets and shirts one over another, to strain some of the
sea-water through them by small quantities, yet that would not deprive
it of its pernicious qualities; and though it refreshed a little in
going down, we were so sick, and strained ourselves so much after it,
that it came up again, and made us more miserable than before. Our
corpse now stunk so, what was left of it, that we could no longer bear
it on board, and every man began to look with an evil eye on his fellow,
to think whose turn it would be next; for the carpenter had started the
question, and preached us into the necessity of it; and we had agreed,
the next morning, to put it to the lot who should be the sacrifice. In
this distress of thought it was so ordered by good Providence, that
on the twenty-first day we thought we spied a sail coming from the
north-west, which caused us to delay our lots till we should see whether
it would discover us or not: we hung up some jackets upon our oars, to
be seen as f