The drowsy afternoon passed slowly. Forward the two Islanders slept peacefully; Jim nodded, curled up against the rover's knees; and the latter sat idly handling the steering-oar, puffing meditatively at his pipe. Only the wild cry of the restless harbingers of calm broke the stillness. Occasionally a flight of startled flying-fish burst forth from beneath the shadow of the whaleboat, and, skipping along the surface, presently plunged out of sight again with tiny splashes. Once a line of porpoises passed, leaping forth each in turn with steady regularity, their polished black bodies gleaming as they curved in and out. Slowly the sun approached the horizon and the darkness crept over the east. Still not a breath of air moved. Two long scorching days passed, and still they lay becalmed. Even the swell had subsided, and the ocean resembled a vast sheet of quivering glass. Things began to look serious. The water was running low. Jack had had to cut down the allowances to half a pint per diem, and the dread torment of thirst was beginning to take hold of them. The close heat was becoming unbearable, and the air stifling with the damp steaminess of a hothouse. The castaways lay panting, and though dry and parched within, without they streamed with moisture. The three whites in their shirt-sleeves, and with ducks or dungarees rolled up to their knees, were tanned as dark as the Kanakas, and their hard-worked muscles strained beneath the shrinking skin, giving their arms and legs the yellow gloss of burnished copper. Jim tried to whistle for a breeze, but his tongue was too swollen from want of water, and the undaunted boy gave it up with a careless laugh. "My penny whistle wants oiling," he said. "I reckons we all want lubricatin' some," observed Broncho. "I shudders when I thinks of all the nosepaint I've put into my system so careless an' easy, without the remotest idees of what you-alls call economy or thrift." "Don't talk about it," grunted Jack, with a queer grin. "I'm thinking of all the fresh-water baths I've had." Undismayed, they joked lightly in the face of a terrible death, though each word was a stab in the throat and their voices grew huskier and weaker every minute. "Speakin' o' baths," pursued Broncho, "I callate I'll take a swim right here. Mebbe the liquid is due to ooze through my hide an' lay the dust some, even if it ain't deep enough to drown a mosquito." Jack silently pointed over the quarter to where the long fin of a shark was visible, almost motionless in the water. "Third day he's been there," muttered the boy, with an irrepressible shudder. "Soaking one's clothes is a small relief. Let's fill one of the empty breakers," proposed Jack. "Shower baths! That's a jimdandy idee," said the cowpuncher approvingly. They were soon scattering salt water over each other, and after this they found some small comfort by keeping their clothes wet.