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“She foundered?”

“I’m comin’ to that. We’d just run our nose into the tropics an’ was headin’ down for Kingston Harbour–slippin’ along at five knots easy an’ steady, an’ not a sign of trouble. The time, so far as I can tell, was somewhere near five bells in the middle watch. I’d turned in, leavin’ Pete on deck, an’ was fast asleep; when all of a suddent a great jolt sent me flyin’ out o’ the berth. As soon as I got my legs an’ wits again I was up on deck, and already the barque was settlin’ by the head like a burst crock. She’d crushed her breastbone in on a sunken tramp of a derelict–a dismasted water-logged lump, that maybe had been washin’ about the Atlantic for twenty year’ an’ more before her app’inted time came to drift across our fair-way an’ settle the hash o’ the John S. Hancock. Sir, I reckon she went down inside o’ five minutes. We’d but bare time to get out one boat and push clear o’ the whirl of her. All hands jumped in; she was but a sixteen foot boat, an’ we loaded her down to the gun’l a’most. There was a brave star-shine, but no moon. Cruel things happen ‘pon the sea.”

He passed a hand over his eyes, as if to brush off the film his sufferings had drawn across them. Then he pursued:

“Cruel things happen ‘pon the sea. We’d no food nor drink but a tin o’ preserved pears; Lord knows how that got there; but ’twas soon done. Pete had a small compass, a gimcrack affair hangin’ to his watch-chain, an’ we pulled by it west-sou’-west towards the nighest land, which we made out must be some one or another o’ the Leeward Islands; but ’twas more to keep ourselves busy than for aught else: the boat was so low in the water that even with the Trade to help us, we made but a mile an hour, an’ had to be balin’ all day and all night. The third day, as the sun grew hot, two o’ the men went mad. We had to pitch ’em overboard an’ beat ’em off wi’ the oars till they drowned: else they’d ha’ sunk the boat. This seemed to hang on Pete’s mind, in a way. All the next night he talked light-headed; said he could hear the dead men hailin’ their names. About midnight he jumped after ’em–to fetch ’em, he said–an’ was drowned. He took his compass with him, but that didn’t make much odds. The boat was lighter now, an’ we hadn’ to bale. Pretty soon I got too weak to notice how the men went. I was lyin’ wi’ my head under the stern sheets an’ only pulled mysel’ up, now an’ then, to peer out over the gun’l. I s’pose ’twas the splashes as the men went over that made me do this. I don’t know for certain. There was sharks about: cruel things happen ‘pon the sea. The boat was in a gashly cauch of blood too. One chap–Jeff Tresawna it was: his mother lived over to Looe–had tried to open a vein, to drink, an’ had made a mess o’t an’ bled to death. Far as I know there was no fightin’ to eat one another, same as one hears tell of now an’ then. The men just went mad and jumped like sheep: ’twas a reg’lar disease. Two would go quick, one atop of t’other; an’ then there’d be a long stillness, an’ then a yellin’ again an’ two more splashes, maybe three. All through it I was dozin’, off an’ on; an’ I reckon these things got mixed up an’ repeated in my head: for our crew was only sixteen all told, an’ it seemed to me I’d heard scores go over. Anyway I opened my eyes at last–night it was, an’ all the stars blazin’–an’ the boat was empty all except me an’ Jeff Tresawna, him that had bled to death. He was lying up high in the bows, wi’ his legs stretched Out towards me along the bottom-boards. There was a twinkle o’ dew ‘pon the thwarts an’ gun’l, an’ I managed to suck my shirt-sleeve, that was wringin’ wet, an’ dropped off dozin’ again belike. The nex’ thing I minded was a sort o’ dream that I was home to Carne again, over Pendower beach–that’s where my father an’ mother lived. I heard the breakers quite plain. The sound of ’em woke me up. This was a little after daybreak. The sound kept on after I’d opened my eyes, though not so loud. I took another suck at my shirt-sleeve an’ pulled myself up to my knees by the thwart an’ looked over. ‘Twas the sound o’ broken water, sure enough, that I’d been hearing; an’ ’twas breakin’ round half a dozen small islands, to leeward, between me an’ the horizon. I call ’em islands; but they was just rocks stickin’ up from the sea, and birds on ’em in plenty; but otherwise, if you’ll excuse the liberty, as bare as the top o’ your head.”