terrific, and it was a mercy that we did not fall in. We had to take
a chance and jump when the boat came under us. Last came the old man,
and took the tiller. He had the oars manned, and gave the order to
let go. That was a terrible moment for all of us, to cast loose from
the schooner, bad as she was. There we were all alone in the middle
of the ocean, bruised from the struggle on deck, and almost dying
from exhaustion and already hungry as wolves. In twenty-four hours
we had had only a cup of coffee and a biscuit.

"It was very dark, and we had no light. We were, however, glad to leave
the El Dorado, because our suffering on her for weeks had been as much
as we could bear. The last I saw of the schooner she was just a huge,
black lump on the black waters. We rose on a swell, and she sank into
a valley out of sight.

"The captain spoke to us now: 'We have a good chance for life,' he
said. 'I have looked over the chart, and it shows that Easter Island
is about nine hundred miles northeast by east. If we are all together
in trying, we may reach there.'

"None of us had ever been to Easter Island, and hardly any of us
had ever heard of it. It looked like a long pull there. All night
the captain and the mate took turns in steering, while we, in turn,
pulled at the oars. We did not dare put a rag of canvas on her,
for the wind was big still. The old man said that as we had both
latitude and longitude to run, we would run out the latitude first,
and then hope for a slant to the land. We were then, he said, in
latitude 31º south, and longitude 121º west. That being so, we had
about three hundred miles to go south and about six hundred east. He
said that Pitcairn Island was but six hundred miles away, but that