Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/98

68 freezes all our limbs, and our hair stands on end. Readers, we entreat you not to entertain, for men already too unhappy, a sentiment of indignation; but to grieve for them, and to shed a tear of pity over their sad lot.

On the fourth day a dozen more had died, and the survivors were "extremely feeble, and bore upon their faces the stamp of approaching dissolution." Shipwrecked crews have lived much longer than this without food, but the situation of these sufferers was peculiarly dreadful. And yet one of them could say:

An ounce of gunpowder was discovered, and the sunshine dried it, so that with a steel and gun-flints a fire was kindled in a wetted cask and some of the little fish were cooked. This was the only food vouchsafed them, a mere shadow of substance among so many, "but the night was made tolerable