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“Well, fur about two hours Andy swum, an’ dove, an’ come up blubberin’, an’ dodged all sorts of floatin’ an’ pitchin’ stuff, fur the swell was still on. But he couldn’t even be so much as sartin that he’d found the canned vittles. To dive down through hatchways, an’ among broken bulkheads, to hunt fur any partiklar kind o’ boxes under seven foot of sea-water, ain’t no easy job. An’ though Andy said he got hold of the end of a box that felt to him like the big uns he’d noticed as havin’ the meat-pies in, he couldn’t move it no more’n if it had been the stump of the foremast. If we could have pumped the water out of the hold we could have got at any part of the cargo we wanted, but as it was, we couldn’t even reach the ship’s stores, which, of course, must have been mostly sp’iled anyway, whereas the canned vittles was just as good as new. The pumps was all smashed or stopped up, for we tried ’em, but if they hadn’t ‘a’ been we three couldn’t never have pumped out that ship on three biscuit a day, an’ only about two days’ rations at that.

“So Andy he come up, so fagged out that it was as much as he could do to get his clothes on, though they wasn’t much, an’ then he stretched himself out under the canvas an’ went to sleep, an’ it wasn’t long afore he was talkin’ about roast turkey an’ cranberry sass, an’ punkin-pie, an’ sech stuff, most of which we knowed was under our feet that present minnit. Tom Simmons he just b’iled over, an’ sung out:’Roll him out in the sun an’ let him cook!I can’t stand no more of this!’But I wasn’t goin’ to have Andy treated no sech way as that, fur if it hadn’t been fur Tom Simmons’ wife an’ young uns, Andy’d been worth two of him to anybody who was consid’rin’ savin’ life. But I give the boy a good punch in the ribs to stop his dreamin’, fur I was as hungry as Tom was, an’ couldn’t stand no nonsense about Christmas dinners.

“It was a little arter noon when Andy woke up, an’ he went outside to stretch himself. In about a minute he give a yell that made Tom an’ me jump. ‘A sail!’ he hollered. ‘A sail!’An’ you may bet your life, young man, that ’twasn’t more’n half a second afore us two had scuffled out from under that canvas, an’ was standin’ by Andy. ‘There she is!’ he shouted, ‘not a mile to win’ard.’I give one look, an’ then I sings out:”Tain’t a sail!It’s a flag of distress!Can’t you see, you land-lubber, that that’s the Stars and Stripes upside down?”Why, so it is,’ says Andy, with a couple of reefs in the joyfulness of his voice. An’ Tom he began to growl as if somebody had cheated him out of half a year’s wages.

“The flag that we saw was on the hull of a steamer that had been driftin’ down on us while we was sittin’ under our canvas. It was plain to see she’d been caught in the typhoon, too, fur there wasn’t a mast or a smoke-stack on her. But her hull was high enough out of the water to catch what wind there was, while we was so low sunk that we didn’t make no way at all. There was people aboard, and they saw us, an’ waved their hats an’ arms, an’ Andy an’ me waved ours; but all we could do was to wait till they drifted nearer, fur we hadn’t no boats to go to ’em if we’d wanted to.