ey did not get rid of
by digestion, but by other means. The captain and the two passengers
did not eat strips and chips, as the sailors did, but scraped the
boot-leather and the wood, and made a pulp of the scrapings by
moistening them with water. The third mate told me that the boots were
old and full of holes; then added thoughtfully, 'but the holes digested
the best.' Speaking of digestion, here is a remarkable thing, and worth
nothing: during this strange voyage, and for a while afterward on shore,
the bowels of some of the men virtually ceased from their functions; in
some cases there was no action for twenty and thirty days, and in one
case for forty-four! Sleeping also came to be rare. Yet the men did
very well without it. During many days the captain did not sleep at
all--twenty-one, I think, on one stretch.

When the landing was made, all the men were successfully protected from
over-eating except the 'Portyghee;' he escaped the watch and ate an
incredible number of bananas: a hundred and fifty-two, the third mate
said, but this was undoubtedly an exaggeration; I think it was a hundred
and fifty-one. He was already nearly half full of leather; it was
hanging out of his ears. (I do not state this on the third mate's
authority, for we have seen what sort of a person he was; I state it on
my own.) The 'Portyghee' ought to have died, of course, and even now
it seems a pity that he didn't; but he got well, and as early as any of
them; and all full of leather, too, the way he was, and butter-timber
and handkerchiefs and bananas. Some of the men did eat handkerchiefs in
those last days, also socks; and he was one of them.

It is to the credit of the men that they did not kill the rooster that
crowed so gallantly mornings. He lived eighteen days, and then stood up
and stretched his neck and made a brave, weak effort to do his duty once
more, and died in the act. It is a picturesque detail; and so is that
rainbow, too--the only one seen in the forty-three days,--raising its
triumphal arch in the skies for the sturdy fighters to sail under to
victory and rescue.

With ten days' provisions Captain Josiah Mitchell performed this
memorable voyage of forty-three days and eight hours in an open boat,
sailing four thousand miles in reality and thirty-three hundred and
sixty by direct courses, and brought every man safe to land. A bright,
simple-hearted, unassuming, plucky, and most companionable man. I
walked the deck with