Page:The ocean and its wonders.djvu/29

 accounts of instances in which sailors have been reduced to the most terrible extremities for want of fresh water; and many a time, since navigation began, have men been brought to feel the dread reality of that condition which is so forcibly expressed in the poem of the “Ancient Mariner:”—

Science, however, at length enabled us to overcome this disadvantage of saltness. By the process of distillation, men soon managed to procure enough water at least to save their lives. One captain of a ship, by accident, lost all his fresh water; and, before he could put into port to replenish, a gale of wind, which lasted three weeks, drove him far out to sea. He had no distilling apparatus on board, and it seemed as if all hope of the crew escaping the most horrible of deaths were utterly taken away. In this extremity the captain’s inventive genius came to his aid. He happened to have on board an old iron, with a wooden cover. Using this as a boiler, a pipe made of a pewter plate, and a wooden cask as a receiver, he set to work, filled the pot with sea water, put an ounce of soap therein to assist in purifying it, and placed it on the fire. When the pot began to boil, the steam passed through the pipe into the cask, where it was condensed into water, minus the saline particles, which, not being evaporable, were left behind in the. In less than an hour