s well pleased at thought of my snugness inside my four
shirts and three coats.

Yet it proved a bitter night, even for me. I was the warmest clad in the
boat. What the others must have suffered I did not care to dwell upon
over much. For fear that we might meet up with more ice in the darkness,
we bailed and held the boat bow-on to the seas. And continually, now
with one mitten, now with the other, I rubbed my nose that it might not
freeze. Also, with memories lively in me of the home circle in Elkton, I
prayed to God.

In the morning we took stock. To commence with, all but two or three had
suffered frost-bite. Aaron Northrup, unable to move because of his
broken hip, was very bad. It was the surgeon's opinion that both of
Northrup's feet were hopelessly frozen.

The longboat was deep and heavy in the water, for it was burdened by the
entire ship's company of twenty-one. Two of these were boys. Benny
Hardwater was a bare thirteen, and Lish Dickery, whose family was near
neighbour to mine in Elkton, was just turned sixteen. Our provisions
consisted of three hundred-weight of beef and two hundred-weight of pork.
The half-dozen loaves of brine-pulped bread, which the cook had brought,
did not count. Then there were three small barrels of water and one
small keg of beer.

Captain Nicholl frankly admitted that in this uncharted ocean he had no
knowledge of any near land. The one thing to do was to run for more
clement climate, which we accordingly did, setting our small sail and
steering quartering before the fresh wind to the north-east.

The food problem was simple arithmetic. We did not count Aaron Northrup,
for we knew he would soon be gone. At a pound per day, our five hundred
pounds would last us twenty-five days; at half a pound, it would last
fifty. So half a pound had it. I divided and issued the meat under the
captain's eyes, and managed it fairly enough, God knows, although some of
the men grumbled from the first. Also, from time to time I made fair
division among the men of the plug tobacco I had stowed in my many
pockets--a thing which I could not but regret, especially when I knew it
was being wasted on this man and that who I was certain could not live a
day more, or, at best, two days or three.

For we began to die soon in the open boat. Not to starvation but to the
killing cold and exposure were those earlier deaths due. It was a matter
of the survival of the toughest and the luck