and food. I say desperate, because the clouds
to windward were banking up blacker and higher
every minute, the wind was freshening already,
and there was every sign of the storm coming
on again wilder and fiercer than ever.

Mr. Clissold, when I passed him on my; way
back to the beach, had got the stores pretty
tidy, covered with the tarpaulin which I had
thrown over them in the bottom of the boat.
Just as I looked down at him in the hollow, I
saw him take a bottle of spirits out of the pocket
of his pilot-coat. He must have stowed the
bottle away there, as I suppose, while I was
breaking open the door of his berth. "You'll
be drowned, and I shall have double allowance
to live upon here," was all he said to me, when
he heard I was going back to the ship. "Yes!
and die, in your turn, when you've got through
it," says I, going away to the boat. It's shocking
to think of now—but we couldn't be civil to
each other, even on the first day when we were
wrecked together!

Having previously stripped to my trousers, in
case of accident, I now pulled out. On getting
from the channel into the broken water again, I
looked over my shoulder to windward, and saw
that I was too late. It was coming!—the ship
was hidden already in the horrible haze of it. I
got the boat's head round to pull back—and I
did pull back, just inside the opening in the reef
which made the mouth of the channel—when
the storm came down on me like death and
judgment. The boat filled in an instant; and I
was tossed head over heels into the water. The
sea, which burst into raging surf upon the rocks
on either side, rushed in one great roller up the
deep channel between them, and took me with
it. If the undertow, afterwards, had lasted for
half a minute, I should have been carried into
the white water, and lost. But a second roller
followed the first, almost on the instant, and
swept me right up on the beach. I had just
strength enough to dig my arms and legs well
into the wet sand; and though I was taken back
with the backward shift of it, I was not taken
into deep water again. Before the third roller
came, I was out of its reach, and was down in a
sort of swoon, on the dry sand.

When I got back to the hollow, in shore, where
I had left my clothes under shelter with the
stores, I found Mr. Clissold snugly crouched
up, in the driest place, with the tarpaulin to
cover him. " Oh!" says he, in a state of great
surprise, "you're not drowned?" "No," says
I; "you won't get your double allowance, after
all." "How much shall I get?" says he, rousing
up and looking anxious. "Your fair half share
of what is here," I answered him. "And how
long will that last me?" says he. "The food,
if you have sense enough to eke it out with what
you may find in this miserable place, barely three
weeks," says I; "and the water (if you ever
drink any) about a fortnight." At hearing that,
he took the bottle out of his pocket again, and
put it to his lips. "I'm cold to the bones,"
says I, frowning at him for a drop. "And I'm
warm to the marrow," says he, chuckling, and
handing me the bottle empty. I pitched it
away at once—or the temptation to break it
over his head might have been too much for me
—I pitched it away, and looked into the
medicine-chest, to see if there was a drop of
peppermint, or anything comforting of that sort, inside.
Only three physic bottles were left in it, all
three being neatly tied over with oilskin. One
of them held a strong white liquor, smelling like
hartshorn. The other two were filled with stuff
in powder, having the names in printed
gibberish, pasted outside. On looking a little closer,
I found, under some broken divisions of the
chest, a small flask covered with wicker-work.
"Ginger-Brandy " was written with pen and
ink on the wicker-work, and the flask was full!
I think that blessed discovery saved me from
shivering myself to pieces. After a pull at the
flask which made a new man of me, I put it
away in my inside breast-pocket; Mr. Clissold
watching me with greedy eyes, but saying
nothing.

All this while, the rain was rushing, the wind
roaring, and the sea crashing, as if Noah's Flood
had come again. I sat close against the
supercargo, because he was in the driest place; and
pulled my fair share of the tarpaulin away from
him, whether he liked it or not. He by no
means liked it; being in that sort of half-
drunken, half-sober state (after finishing his
bottle), in which a man's temper is most easily
upset by trifles. The upset of his temper showed
itself in the way of small aggravations—of which
I took no notice, till he suddenly bethought
himself of angering me by going back again to that
dispute about father, which had bred ill-blood
between us, on the day when we first saw each
other. If he had been a younger man, I am
afraid I should have stopped him by a punch on
the head. As it was, considering his age and
the shame of this quarrelling betwixt us when
we were both cast away together, I only warned
him that I might punch his head, if he went on.
It did just as well—and I'm glad now to think
that it did.

We were huddled so close together, that when
he coiled himself up to sleep (with a growl),
and when he did go to sleep (with a grunt), he
growled and grunted into my ear. His rest,
like the rest of all the regular drunkards I have
ever met with, was broken. He ground his
teeth, and talked in his sleep. Among the words
he mumbled to himself, I heard as plain as could
be father's name. This vexed, but did not
surprise me, seeing that he had been talking of
father before he dropped off. But when I made
out next, among his mutterings and mumblings,
the words "five hundred pound," spoken over
and over again, with father's name, now before,
now after, now mixed in along with them, I got
curious, and listened for more. My listening
(and, serve me right, you will say) came to
nothing: he certainly talked on, but I couldn't
make out a word more that he said.

When he woke up, I told him plainly he had
been talking in his sleep—and mightily taken
aback he looked when he first heard it. " What