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248 patience and passivity in physical suffering. Delirium had not yet come on as it might to-morrow, yet, although suffering the pangs of the damned, she did not speak nor move; so had she lain for the past four days without moving.

How slow that fierce enemy of theirs, the sun, seemed to be in the withdrawing of its intolerable glare, which had been fixed upon them without surcease all the day, first on their backs, frizzling their spinal chords, then on their heads, baking their brains, and next on their breasts. Slicking the life-blood from their hearts. The white heat of morning and midday changed to the yellow flame of afternoon, soon to become like incandescent charcoal, red-hot and glowing.

Thus had they watched the pitiless avenger day after day, for they had been drawn back into the latitudes of calms. Its rising up, with what seemed to them mocking gaiety, like a cruel savage refreshed with sleep, and preparing for his day of slow torture by laughing gibes at his chained victims, then gathering intensity and strength as he warmed to his work, finally to sink back flushed and wearied with his unrelaxed vigil. This was how the sun in its different phases during the day appeared to them. They cursed it deeply and hopelessly while they waited for the coming of darkness.

They did not care how they drifted now, for they had no knowledge of where they were, no strength left to pull an oar, even if it had been worth while to pull, for where they lay they had as much prospect of being picked up, perhaps, as by moving about aimlessly. While they remained still, the hope still fed them that they might be in the right quarter for a passing steamship, whereas by roving they might only go out of the course, which was a maddening thought not be