Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/361

Rh feebly crawling out of the shelter. The crew of the Nottingham Galley were carried to the little seaport at the mouth of the Piscataqua, and there all of them recovered, although seriously crippled because of frozen hands and feet. At the end of Captain Deane's story is the following note:

The tale of the Nottingham Galley suggests other episodes in which living men of a ship's crew were chosen by lot to be sacrificed as food for the others. As dramatic as any of them was the fate of the American sloop Peggy, which became waterlogged while homeward bound to New York from the Azores. Food and water gone, there were wine and brandy in the cargo, unluckily, and the sailors got drunk and stayed so much of the time. On Christmas day a sail was sighted, and the ship bore down to speak the drifting hulk of the Peggy. For some reason this other vessel, after promising to send