Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/121

Rh with white turbans fashioned from bolts of muslin. With bamboo-poles, also washed from the ship, Captain Greig set his men to making tents for the women. There was very little material, however, and most of the people sat around in a sort of wretched stupor, drenched, benumbed, hopeless. Several barrels of strong liquors came rolling in with the surf, and the sailors, of course, drank all they could hold. One of them, an old barnacle named John Dulliver, showed a streak of marked sagacity. After tapping a barrel of Holland gin and guzzling to the limit of his stowage space, he stove in one end, emptied the barrel, and crawled snugly into it to slumber. This seemed such a brilliant notion that as fast as the ship's water-barrels drifted ashore they were tenanted by castaways who resembled so many hermit-crabs.

For six days the party forlornly existed in continuous rain, with no means of kindling a fire, and eating raw pork that was cast up by the sea and such birds as they could obtain. Then a case of surgical instruments was found on the beach, and it contained a providential flint and steel. Fire was made, and spears were contrived of poles, with knives lashed to them, so that the monstrous sea-lions could be killed and used for food. There were millions of penguins, and their eggs could be