was not until past midday,--we could see nothing of them. We could
not stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat.
The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar,
a passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,--a short
sturdy man, with a stammer.

We drifted famishing, and, after our water had come to an end,
tormented by an intolerable thirst, for eight days altogether.
After the second day the sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm. It is
quite impossible for the ordinary reader to imagine those eight days.
He has not, luckily for himself, anything in his memory to imagine with.
After the first day we said little to one another, and lay
in our places in the boat and stared at the horizon, or watched,
with eyes that grew larger and more haggard every day, the misery
and weakness gaining upon our companions. The sun became pitiless.
The water ended on the fourth day, and we were already thinking
strange things and saying them with our eyes; but it was, I think,
the sixth before Helmar gave voice to the thing we had all been thinking.
I remember our voices were dry and thin, so that we bent towards
one another and spared our words. I stood out against it with all
my might, was rather for scuttling the boat and perishing together
among the sharks that followed us; but when Helmar said that if his
proposal was accepted we should have drink, the sailor came round
to him.

I would not draw lots however, and in the night the sailor whispered
to Helmar again and again, and I sat in the bows with my clasp-knife
in my hand, though I doubt if I had the stuff in me to fight;
and in the morning I agreed to Helmar's proposal, and we handed
halfpence to find the odd man. The lot fell upon the sailor;