"On the 13th day it fell calm, and soon after a breeze of wind sprang up from the south-south-west and blew to a gale, so that we ran before the sea at the rate of five or six miles an hour under our blanket, till we judged we were to the south ward of Fayal and to the westward sixty leagues; but the wind blowing strong we could not attempt to steer for it. Our wishes were now for the wind to shift to the westward. This was the fifteenth day we had been in the boat, and we had only one day's bread and one bottle of water remaining of a second supply of rain. Our sufferings were now as great as human strength could bear, but we were convinced that good spirits were a better support than any great bodily strength; for on this day Thomas Matthews, quarter-master, the stoutest man in the boat, perished from hunger and cold; on the day before he complained of want of strength in his throat, as he expressed it, to swallow his morsel, and in the night drank salt water, grew delirious and died without a groan. As it became next to a certainty that we should all perish in the same manner in a day or two, it was somewhat comfortable to reflect that dying of hunger was not so dreadful as our imagination had represented. Others had complained of these symptoms in their throats; some had drunk their own urine; and all but myself had drunk salt water. "As yet despair and gloom had been successfully prohibited; and as the evenings closed in, the men had been encouraged by turns to sing a song, or relate a story, instead of supper; but this evening I found it impossible to raise either. As the night came on it fell calm, and about midnight a breeze of wind sprang up, we guessed from the westward by the swell, but there not being a star to be seen, we were afraid of running out of the way, and waited impatiently for the rising sun to be our compass. "As soon as the dawn appeared we found the wind to be exactly as we had wished, at west-south-west, and immediately spread our sail, running before the sea at the rate of four miles an hour. Our last breakfast had been served with the bread and water remaining, when John Gregory, quarter-master, declared with much confidence that he saw land in the south-east. We had so often seen fogbanks, which had the appearance of land, that I did not trust myself to believe it, and cautioned the people (who were extravagantly elated) that they might not feel the effects of disappointment, till at length one of them broke out into a most immoderate fit of joy, which I could not restrain, and declared he had never seen land in his life if what he now saw was not land.