from the beach lay stagnant lagoons and dreary
flats of morass and swamp, the edges of which were drained by the roots
of heavy forest trees whose impenetrable gloom clothed the intervening
country and hillsides.

And out before them in the tempestuous waters the wreck lay, from whose
stores must come their only present chance of life.

With nightfall presently at hand, though they were cold and wet and
hungry, they had to try to find a shelter, and at last chanced upon an
Indian hut at a little distance from the beach. Into this poor refuge
the men packed themselves in a voluntary imprisonment, while, to add to
their distress, they were afraid of being attacked by Indians.

One of the officers died in this miserable place during the night, and
of those left outside who were unable from want of room to press in, two
more perished from cold.

The next morning found them cramped with starvation and cold, with no
food but some fragments of biscuit, a solitary seagull someone had
killed, and the stalks of wild celery that grew upon the beach. This
they made into soup, and served as far as it would go to the hundred and
forty men who clamoured for food.

The men who had remained on the wreck were now anxious to be brought on
shore, and repeatedly made signals to that effect; but the sea was
running high and it was not possible at once to set out to their relief.
In their rage at the delay they fired one of the quarter-deck guns upon
the camp, while on board they destroyed everything they could lay hands
on. In his brutality and greed for spoil, a man named James Mitchell
murdered one of their number. When at last they were brought to land
they came dressed in laced clothes and officers' suits which they had
put on over their own dirty clothes.

These men Captain Cheap instantly had stripped of their finery and arms,
and enforced the most strict discipline upon them and all the crew.

In a few days they had a shelter made with boats turned keel upwards,
and placed on props, while the sides were lined with canvas and boughs.

Then followed five weary months, during which these hunger-driven men
roamed the wretched island rocks both night and day, searching for
shell-fish for food--men who were even thankful at the times when they
were able to kill and eat the carrion crows that fed upon the flesh of
their drowned comrades cast up by the tide. Some Indians surprised them
by a visit, and stayed for several days, and with