Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/198

188 the rest of the food was lost. At daylight they took him aboard the boat, and finally abandoned the foundered craft. Then they took to the oars, pulling away steadily hour after hour, and as it proved for day after day, having no object except to keep going, and where they had no idea. The weather became calm and the sea glassy. The sun shone twelve hours out of the twenty-four and passed so nearly overhead as to cast little shadow at noon, but filled the. whole sky with heat and made the horizon all around, never broken either by notch of land or speck of sail, palpitate and waver like the atmosphere of an oven. It dropped precisely the same at night, and almost instantly the sky was full of brilliant stars, only they pointed to no known land.

This continued ten days, making this entire journey on the water sixteen days long. During the last part of this time, as might be supposed, there was great suffering from hunger and thirst. The four cocoanuts were all the food for ten days, and although they were saving of the water in the bamboo joints, this became thick as frogs' spawn, and sour and unfit to use. It had curdled and rotted in the juice of the wood. Some of the sailors drank saltwater, but these suffered most. Their lips swelled and cracked and turned dark. Holden wetted his mouth and face frequently, but though the temptation was great, resolutely abstained from the sea water. He greatly mitigated his thirst by keeping a button in his mouth, by which a flow of saliva was maintained. Indeed, he says that life may be prolonged almost indefinitely by thus using a button or coin, and the sense of thirst be mostly overcome without drink of any kind.

The men gradually gave up effort. Toward night of the sixteenth day they had all lain down and were yielding themselves to their fate. "They lay down in the boat side by side, like fingers on your hand,' says Hol-