s I calculated made up some fraction over two ounces. This was the
allowance of solid food served out once a-day to each, from that time to
the end; with the addition of a coffee-berry, or sometimes half a one,
when the weather was very fair, for breakfast. We had nothing else
whatever, but half a pint of water each per day, and sometimes, when we
were coldest and weakest, a teaspoonful of rum each, served out as a
dram. I know how learnedly it can be shown that rum is poison, but I
also know that in this case, as in all similar cases I have ever read
of--which are numerous--no words can express the comfort and support
derived from it. Nor have I the least doubt that it saved the lives of
far more than half our number. Having mentioned half a pint of water as
our daily allowance, I ought to observe that sometimes we had less, and
sometimes we had more; for much rain fell, and we caught it in a canvas
stretched for the purpose.

Thus, at that tempestuous time of the year, and in that tempestuous part
of the world, we shipwrecked people rose and fell with the waves. It is
not my intention to relate (if I can avoid it) such circumstances
appertaining to our doleful condition as have been better told in many
other narratives of the kind than I can be expected to tell them. I will
only note, in so many passing words, that day after day and night after
night, we received the sea upon our backs to prevent it from swamping the
boat; that one party was always kept baling, and that every hat and cap
among us soon got worn out, though patched up fifty times, as the only
vessels we had for that service; that another party lay down in the
bottom of the boat, while a third rowed; and that we were soon all in
boils and blisters and rags.

The other boat was a source of such anxious interest to all of us that I
used to wonder whether, if we were saved, the time could ever come when
the survivors in this boat of ours could be at all indifferent to the
fortunes of the survivors in that. We got out a tow-rope whenever the
weather permitted, but that did not often happen, and how we two parties
kept within the same horizon, as we did, He, who mercifully permitted it
to be so for our consolation, only knows. I never shall forget the looks
with which, when the morning light came, we used to gaze about us over
the stormy waters, for the other boat. We once parted company for
seventy-two hours, and we believed them to have gone down,