another. "There's a sort of a peculiar flavour
with 'em that I don't disremember to have tasted with fowl-bones when
I've had 'em for breakfast afore."

There was unquestionably "a sort of a peculiar flavour" with my share,
but I should scarcely have referred to it with such gusto as they did, I
thought.

"Now if I could only have washed my breakfast down with a pannikin of
grog," remarked a third, "I should ha' said as I'd thoroughly enj'yed
it."

"Grog!" exclaimed the first speaker. "Grog be blowed! Whenever I've a
glass of grog I always wants another on top of it, and so I should to-
day. I'd give all the grog as ever was brewed for one good long swig at
the spring which bubbles out from under the rocks behind my poor old
mother's house on Dartmoor. That _is_ sweet water, if you like, mates."

"'Tain't sweeter, I know, than the water of the trout-stream in which I
used to fish with a bit of twine bent on to a crooked pin, when I was a
boy," remarked another. "Many's the time as I've gone down on my hands
and knees upon a rock or a little bit of a shingly bar, when I've been
hot and thirsty--as it might be now--and drunk and drunk until I could
drink no more. My eyes! mates, but they _was_ drinks, and no mistake."

And so they rambled on, their dry lips smacking with every fresh
reminiscence.

I knew that this sort of conversation would do more harm than good by
intensifying the feeling of burning thirst from which they were
suffering, so I cut it short by remarking,--

"By the way, lads, speaking of fishing, cannot one or another of you
work up one of the nails out of those hatches into a fish-hook with your
knives? The others meanwhile might get some threads out of that piece
of spare canvas which we cut off the topgallant sail, and twist it up
into a fishing-line."

No sooner said than done. The poor fellows were glad of something to
employ their minds and fingers upon, and went to work with avidity to
carry out the suggestion.

By sunset an ordinary three-inch nail had been hammered and bent and
scraped down to a very respectable substitute for a hook; while the
other three seamen had each contrived to spin up about five fathoms of
good strong line. Neither hook nor line, however, was ever used.

The breeze again freshened during the night, driving the raft along
about two knots in the hour; and again uprose the sun in a cloudless
sky.

We divided another of the dead fowls between us, but o