had then been nearly three months at sea, or, to be exact, it was
seventy-eight days since we had left port. It was thirty hours after
the coffee and biscuit on the El Dorado, and God knows how much longer
since we had had a whole meal, and now we didn't have much. The old
man bossed it. He took a half-bucket of fresh water, and into this he
put a can of soup. This he served, and gave each man two soda crackers
and his share of a pound of corned beef. We dipped the crackers into
the bucket. (I tell you it was better than the ham and eggs we had
at the hotel when we landed.) We had this kind of a meal twice a day,
and no more.

"The next day the wind was again very strong, with thunder and
lightning, and we ran dead before the wind with no more sail than
a handkerchief. The sea began to break over the boat, and our old
man said that we could not live through it unless we could rig up a
sea-anchor. We were sure we would drown. We made one by rolling four
blankets together tightly and tying around them a long rope with
which our boat was made fast to the ship when we embarked. This we
let drag astern about ninety-feet. It held the boat fairly steady,
and kept the boat's head to the seas. We fastened it to the ring in
the stern. We used this sea-anchor many times throughout our voyage,
and without it we would have gone down sure. Of course we took in
a great deal of water, anyhow; but we could keep her baled out,
and the sea-anchor prevented her from swamping.

"The nights were frightful, and many times all of us had terrible
dreams, and sometimes thought we were on shore. Men would cry out about
things they thought they saw, and other men would have to tell them
they were not so. We were always up and down on top of the swells, and
our bodies ached so terribly from the sitting-down position and from