the map and see where the boat is: latitude 16 degrees 44 minutes,
longitude 119 degrees 20 minutes. It is more than two hundred miles
west of the Revillagigedo Islands, so they are quite out of the question
against the trades, rigged as this boat is. The nearest land available
for such a boat is the American group, six hundred and fifty miles
away, westward; still, there is no note of surrender, none even of
discouragement! Yet, May 30, 'we have now left: one can of oysters;
three pounds of raisins; one can of soup; one-third of a ham; three
pints of biscuit-crumbs.'

And fifteen starved men to live on it while they creep and crawl six
hundred and fifty miles. 'Somehow I feel much encouraged by this change
of course (west by north) which we have made to-day.' Six hundred and
fifty miles on a hatful of provisions. Let us be thankful, even after
thirty-two years, that they are mercifully ignorant of the fact that
it isn't six hundred and fifty that they must creep on the hatful, but
twenty-two hundred!

Isn't the situation romantic enough just as it stands? No. Providence
added a startling detail: pulling an oar in that boat, for common
seaman's wages, was a banished duke--Danish. We hear no more of him;
just that mention, that is all, with the simple remark added that 'he is
one of our best men'--a high enough compliment for a duke or any other
man in those manhood-testing circumstances. With that little glimpse
of him at his oar, and that fine word of praise, he vanishes out of our
knowledge for all time. For all time, unless he should chance upon this
note and reveal himself.

The last day of May is come. And now there is a disaster to report:
think of it, reflect upon it, and try to understand how much it
means, when you sit down with your family and pass your eye over your
breakfast-table. Yesterday there were three pints of bread-crumbs; this
morning the little bag is found open and some of the crumbs are missing.
'We dislike to suspect any one of such a rascally act, but there is
no question that this grave crime has been committed. Two days will
certainly finish the remaining morsels. God grant us strength to reach
the American group!' The third mate told me in Honolulu that in these
days the men remembered with bitterness that the 'Portyghee' had
devoured twenty-two days' rations while he lay waiting to be transferred
from the burning ship, and that now they cursed him and swore an oath
that if it came to can