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 an' wits again I was up on deck, and already the barque was settlin' by the head like a burst crock. She'd crushed her breastbone in on a sunken tramp of a derelict--a dismasted water-logged lump, that maybe had been washin' about the Atlantic for twenty year' an' more before her app'inted time came to drift across our fair-way an' settle the hash o' the _John S. Hancock_. Sir, I reckon she went down inside o' five minutes. We'd but bare time to get out one boat and push clear o' the whirl of her. All hands jumped in; she was but a sixteen foot boat, an' we loaded her down to the gun'l a'most. There was a brave star-shine, but no moon. Cruel things happen 'pon the sea."

He passed a hand over his eyes, as if to brush off the film his sufferings had drawn across them. Then he pursued:

"Cruel things happen 'pon the sea. We'd no food nor drink but a tin o' preserved pears; Lord knows how that got there; but 'twas soon done. Pete had a small compass, a gimcrack affair hangin' to his watch-chain, an' we pulled by it west-sou'-west towards the nighest land, which we made out must be some one or another o' the Leeward Islands; but 'twas