r
my face in my uneasy slumber, and followed eagerly the direction of her
eyes.

"Oh! no; only a school of dolphins; but it is so pretty! Some came quite
near just now; the men were harpooning them; but if we had them we could
not cook them, you know, on this miserable contrivance."

"One we should be very grateful for, Ada, since it is all that lies
between us and destruction!" I answered, sorrowfully, for the levity of
her spirit grieved and shocked me.

"I don't know about that; I think we might as well have gone down at
once as stay here, and be roasted and starved. How hot it is to-day!
What would I not give for a good glass of ice-water! Don't look so
shocked; we shall be saved, of course. I am not the least afraid about
that, for Mr. Garth says we _must_ see a ship before evening. Don't you
mark the flag flying at the mast-head? He brought it on board on
purpose, so that they might not mistake our country (the packets, I
mean), and give us the go-by as that Spanish vessel did! But they do say
that was a pirate; and that, instead of sitting on a plank, we should
have been walking a plank by this time, had they rescued us. I'm rather
glad they didn't, though, after all--things couldn't be much worse than
they are, could they, now?--There, I came very near falling, I declare!"

The moans of the sick woman at my side became almost constant toward
noon; and she was obliged to surrender her infant wholly to my charge,
for the haemorrhage of the day before had returned, and she was fast
drifting into unconsciousness. "Water, water!" was the only intelligible
cry that left her lips, and that we had to give was warm and brackish,
from the occasional lapping of the sea against the barrels, into which
it oozed insensibly.

The sun shone down hot and brazen, from the lurid heavens, covered with
filmy clouds, so equally overspreading it that a thin, gray veil seemed
to interpose between us and its scorching rays, scarcely tempering them
by its diaphanous medium.

Beneath it lay the sea, like a copper shield, smooth and glowing,
seething like a boiling caldron, with its level foam, for the long,
low-rolling billows lifted themselves but lazily from Ocean's breast,
and assumed no distinctness of form or motion. Not the faintest breeze
came to relieve the stifling closeness of the atmosphere, or lift the
collapsed sail, or furled flag, that clung around our mast. The air
shimmered visibly around us, as though undergoing s