"Two days and two nights wore away, and we drifted about the ocean without a compass and without a sail. Another day passed over our heads and we began to be afraid to look at one another. Thirst and hunger were turning us into tigers. The owner's son sat up my side at the helm, and leaned his head upon my knee. He slept most of the time, except at intervals, when he would waken up and look, with a bright eager eye, far over the waste of the inhospitable sea, and then he would gaze upon the miniature of his father that he wore around his neck. I saw what was coming. We were dying of thirst and hunger, and there was no hope. A few hours might delay the catastrophe; and a few hours only did delay it. It began with low whisperings and mutterings among the sailors, and then it broke out into loud oaths and fierce gestures. Each man seized what was nearest to him as a means of defense. The oars were raised from the water, and held in the air like war-clubs, and the boat drifted about, heedless of the helm, which I still held in my almost powerless hand. I had placed a couple of loaded pistols in my coat-pocket before we left the ship, and when I feared that I would have to prevent some mutinous spirit at a moment when disobedience would have been destruction to all; and these I guarded with a feverish care, lest they might be seized upon by some wretch in his extreme despair, and used as the means by which food could be obtained in that awful hour of our starvation. I saw that a crisis in our lives was at hand, for the low murmurs had grown into unmistakable expressions, and at last a demand was made for human flesh. One must be killed to feed the rest.
"The skeletons were going to do murder for food, and yet one human feeling beside that of hunger remained within them, that I did not know of, positively, then; but subsequent events, speedily following, revealed it to me.
"It was inevitable! one man among the gaunt and starving crew must die; but who was to be that man? That was a question which might possibly be determined on the instant where one man was stronger than the other, and only two were in our lorn condition; but when there were many, and none stronger than the rest, the matter became one of terrible difficulty.
