Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/142

110 pelled them to seek the land and risk death at the hands of the savage Malays. It was their hope to proceed by sea to Macassar, which they reckoned lay about three degrees to the southward.

They must have had a little water during these six days, but David Woodard's statement that the rations were a few cocoanuts is entirely credible. Many a boat-load of castaways has died or gone mad after privations no more severe, while on the other hand a crew of toughened seamen, in the prime of their youth, is exceedingly hard to kill.

Toward a cove on this unknown, hostile shore of Celebes the gaunt sailors wearily steered their boat and beached it in the languid ripple of surf. They had no sooner crawled ashore than two proas skimmed in from seaward, dropping anchor and making ready to send off a canoe filled with armed Malays. Woodard shouted to his men, and they pushed the boat out and scrambled into it before they were discovered. Skirting a bight of the shore, they headed for the open sea and dodged away from the proas.

Four miles beyond, after they had rounded a green point of land, a feathery cocoanut-grove ran to the water's-edge, and they could go no farther. The mate left two men to guard the boat, and the three others went with him; but they were too weak