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Nonsense Novels by Stephen Leacock
page 114 of 150 (76%)

Over us was the burnished copper sky of the tropics. The heavy,
leaden sea lapped the sides of the raft. All about us was a
litter of corn beef cans and lager beer bottles. Our sufferings
in the ensuing days were indescribable. We beat and thumped at
the cans with our fists. Even at the risk of spoiling the tins
for ever we hammered them fiercely against the raft. We stamped
on them, bit at them and swore at them. We pulled and clawed at
the bottles with our hands, and chipped and knocked them against
the cans, regardless even of breaking the glass and ruining the
bottles.

It was futile.

Then day after day we sat in moody silence, gnawed with hunger, with
nothing to read, nothing to smoke, and practically nothing to talk
about.

On the tenth day the Captain broke silence.

"Get ready the lots, Blowhard," he said. "It's got to come to that."

"Yes," I answered drearily, "we're getting thinner every day."

Then, with the awful prospect of cannibalism before us, we drew lots.

I prepared the lots and held them to the Captain. He drew the longer
one.

"Which does that mean," he asked, trembling between hope and despair.
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