to the forecastle, his tall figure swaying and his long arms waving. Abel
Keeling had not seen him since. Most likely, he had died in the
forecastle during the night. If he had not been dead he would have come
aft again for water....

At the remembrance of the water Abel Keeling lifted his head. The strands
of lean muscle about his emaciated mouth worked, and he made a little
pressure of his sun-blackened hand on the deck, as if to verify its
steepness and his own balance. The mainmast was some seven or eight yards
away.... He put one stiff leg under him and began, seated as he was, to
make shuffling movements down the slope.

To the mainmast, near the belfry, was affixed his contrivance for
catching water. It consisted of a collar of rope set lower at one side
than at the other (but that had been before the mast had steeved so many
degrees away from the zenith), and tallowed beneath. The mists lingered
later in that gully of a strait than they did on the open ocean, and the
collar of rope served as a collector for the dews that condensed on the
mast. The drops fell into a small earthen pipkin placed on the deck
beneath it.

Abel Keeling reached the pipkin and looked into it. It was nearly a third
full of fresh water. Good. If Bligh, the mate, was dead, so much the more
water for Abel Keeling, master of the _Mary of the Tower_. He dipped two
fingers into the pipkin and put them into his mouth. This he did several
times. He did not dare to raise the pipkin to his black and broken lips
for dread of a remembered agony, he could not have told how many days
ago, when a devil had whispered to him, and he had gulped down the
contents of the pipkin in the morning, and for the rest of the day had
gone waterless.... Again he moistened his fingers and sucked them; then