Page:Last Cruise of the Spitfire.djvu/186

176 It is wonderful what life the prospect of rain put into us. Eagerly we watched the approach of the dark clouds that were fast bearing down upon us.

"We must fix the cask to hold water," I said, "and also the canvas."

"And we can fix the sail, too," added Phil. "We must catch as much as possible."

I put the bung back into the cask, hammering it in well. Then by the aid of the mast, rudder and boom, we hung the canvas so that every drop that might fall upon it would be caught and poured into the cask.

Hardly had we finished our preparations when the storm bore down upon us. The lightning was terrific, the thunder deafening, and the rain came down in a deluge.

We heeded not the storm. We drank our fill of the first water that entered the cask, and oh, how good it seemed! Many a time since I have drunk spring water of the purest and coolest, but nothing that could compare with that which Phil Jones and I caught on the canvas in the middle of the Atlantic.

Our thirst satisfied, we turned our attention to filling the cask. It was not long before we had it more than half full, and as the cask was a twenty-gallon one, this was not bad, and would last us quite some time.