Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/170

136 These relics were enough to indicate the fate of a large company of seamen who had been cast away in this savage region.

There were men of all sorts among these hapless refugees of the Oswego, and most of them endured their hard lot with the patient courage of the deep-water mariner. The cook, however, was an exasperating rascal of an Irishman called Pat who had smuggled himself aboard at Cork as a ragged stowaway, and he lost no time in starting trouble on the coast of Barbary. In his pack was a bottle of gin, which had passed the skipper's inspection as water, and while on sentry duty at night to watch for prowling Arabs, Pat got uproariously drunk and fought a Danish foremast hand who was tippling with him. In the ruction they smashed several precious bottles of water, and were too tipsy next morning to resume the march.

The other sailors held an informal trial. This was their own affair, and Captain Paddock's protests were unheeded. Pat was so drunk that he could not appear in his own defense, and the sentence was that his share of the bread and water should be taken from him and he be left behind to die. He was accordingly abandoned, blissfully snoring on the sand, the empty gin bottle in his fist; but after a mile or so of painful progress two of