Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/37

Rh was quiet and dignified, as befitted one who might have been a painted warrior in an earlier day. The account says of him:

The story of the Polly is unstained by any horrid episode of cannibalism, which occurs now and then in the old chronicles of shipwreck. In more than one seaport the people used to point at some weather-beaten mariner who was reputed to have eaten the flesh of a comrade. It made a marked man of him, he was shunned, and the unholy notoriety followed him to other ships and ports. The sailors of the Polly did cut off a leg of the poor, departed Moho, and used it as bait for sharks, and they actually caught a huge shark by so doing.

It was soon after this that they found the other pistol of the pair, and employed the barrel to increase the capacity of the still. By lengthening the tube attached to the spout of the tea-kettle, they gained more cooling surface for condensation, and the flow of fresh water now amounted to "eight junk bottles full" every twenty-four hours. Be-