It was enough to make us repine over
the loss of the provision that had so mysteriously gone; and if
any one of us should die, I doubt whether the survivors would a
second time resist the temptation to assuage their pangs by
tasting human flesh.
Before long, all the cravings of hunger began to return to the
sailors, and I could see their eyes greedily glancing upon us,
starved as they knew us to be, as though they were reckoning our
hours, and already were preparing to consume us as their prey.
As is always the case with shipwrecked men, we were tormented by
thirst far more than by hunger; and if, in the height of our
sufferings, we had been offered our choice between a few drops of
water and a few crumbs of biscuit, I do not doubt that we should,
without exception, have preferred to take the water.
And what a mockery to our condition did it seem that all this
while there was water, water, nothing but water, everywhere
around us! Again and again, incapable of comprehending how
powerless it was to relieve me, I put a few drops within my lips,
but only with the invariable result of bringing on a most trying
nausea, and rendering my thirst more unendurable than before.
Forty-two days had passed since we quitted the sinking
"Chancellor." There could be no hope now; all of us must die, and
by the most deplorable of deaths. I was quite conscious that a
mist was gathering over my brain; I felt my senses sinking into a
condition of torpor; I made an effort, but all in vain, to master
the delirium that I was aware was taking possession of my reason.
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