t, when, within the compass of
three hours, I had all these several circumstances over again, one after
another, viz. sick, sleepy, eagerly hungry, pain in the stomach, then
ravenous again, then sick again, then lunatic, then crying, then
ravenous again, and so every quarter of an hour; and my strength wasted
exceedingly. At night I laid me down, having no comfort but in the hope
that I should die before morning.

"All this night I had no sleep, but the hunger was now turned into a
disease, and I had a terrible colic and griping, wind instead of food
having found its way into my bowels; and in this condition I lay till
morning, when I was surprised a little with the cries and lamentations
of my young master, who called out to me that his mother was dead. I
lifted myself up a little, for I had not strength to rise, but found she
was not dead, though she was able to give very little signs of life.

"I had then such convulsions in my stomach for want of some sustenance,
that I cannot describe them, with such frequent throes and pangs of
appetite that nothing but the tortures of death can imitate; and this
condition I was in when I heard the seamen above cry out 'A sail! a
sail!' and halloo and jump about as if they were distracted.

"I was not able to get off from the bed, and my mistress much less; and
my master was so sick that I thought he had been expiring; so we could
not open the cabin-door, or get any account what it was that occasioned
such a combustion; nor had we any conversation with the ship's company
for two days, they having told us they had not a mouthful of any thing
to eat in the ship; and they told us afterwards they thought we had
been dead.

"It was this dreadful condition we were in when you were sent to save
our lives; and how you found us, Sir, you know as well as I, and
better too."

This was her own relation, and is such a distinct account of starving to
death as I confess I never met with, and was exceeding entertaining to
me: I am the rather apt to believe it to be a true account, because the
youth gave me an account of a good part of it; though I must own not so
distinct and so feelingly as his maid, and the rather because it seems
his mother fed him at the price of her own life: but the poor maid,
though her constitution being stronger than that of her mistress, who
was in years, and a weakly woman too, she might struggle harder with it;
I say, the poor maid might be supposed to feel the e