Thanks to the kind care of M. Letourneur and Miss Herbey, I
recovered consciousness, but I believe that it is to Robert
Curtis that I owe my real deliverance, for he it was that
prevented me from being carried away by a second heavy wave.
The tempest, fierce as it was, did not last more than a few
hours; but even in that short space of time what an irreparable
loss we have sustained, and what a load of misery seems stored up
for us in the future!
Of the two sailors who perished in the storm, one was Austin, a
fine active young man of about eight-and-twenty; the other was
old O'Ready, the survivor of so many ship wrecks. Our party is
thus reduced to sixteen souls, leaving a total barely exceeding
half the number of those who embarked on board the "Chancellor"
at Charleston.
Curtis's first care had been to take a strict account of the
remnant of our provisions. Of all the torrents of rain that fell
in the night we were unhappily unable to catch a single drop; but
water will not fail us yet, for about fourteen gallons still
remain in the bottom of the broken barrel, whilst the second
barrel has not yet been touched. But of food we have next to
nothing. The cases containing the dried meat, and the fish that
we had preserved, have both been washed away, and all that now
remains to us is about sixty pounds of biscuit. Sixty pounds of
biscuit between sixteen persons! Eight days, with half a pound a
day apiece, will consume it all.
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