Mendez and Fuesco on the day they left Jamaica held on their way till night, encouraging the Indians to exert themselves with their paddles. The weather was extremely hot, so that the Indians sometimes leaped overboard to refresh themselves by swimming and then came fresh again to their paddles. At night they lost sight of the land, and half the Christians and Indians took watch and watch alternately to sleep and row, taking great care that the Indians might not prove treacherous. Advancing in this manner all night, they were very weary when day appeared; but the commanders encouraged the men, sometimes rowing themselves to give a good example; and after eating to recruit their strength, they fell to their work again, seeing nothing all around but the sky and the sea. Though this was enough to distress them sufficiently, yet they were besides in the predicament of Tantalus, who had water within a span of his mouth yet could not quench his thirst; such was their distress, for, through the improvidence of the Indians and the prodigious heat of the preceding day and night, all their water was drank up without any regard to the future. As heat and labour together are altogether intolerable without drink, and as the heat and thirst increased the second day the higher the sun ascended, their strength was entirely exhausted by noon. By good fortune the captains had reserved two casks of water under their own management, from which they sparingly relieved the Indians, and kept them up till the cool of the evening, and encouraged them by the assurance that they would soon see a small island called _Nabazza_, which lay in their way eight leagues from Hispaniola. This and their extraordinary thirst quite cast them down, and made them believe that they had lost their way, for according to their reckoning they had now run twenty leagues and ought to have been in sight of Hispaniola; but it was weariness that deceived them, for a canoe that rows well cannot in a day and night proceed above ten leagues, and they had been retarded by the currents which were adverse to their course.