"I don't know about that; I think we might as well have gone down at once as stay here, and be roasted and starved. How hot it is to-day! What would I not give for a good glass of ice-water! Don't look so shocked; we shall be saved, of course. I am not the least afraid about that, for Mr. Garth says we _must_ see a ship before evening. Don't you mark the flag flying at the mast-head? He brought it on board on purpose, so that they might not mistake our country (the packets, I mean), and give us the go-by as that Spanish vessel did! But they do say that was a pirate; and that, instead of sitting on a plank, we should have been walking a plank by this time, had they rescued us. I'm rather glad they didn't, though, after all--things couldn't be much worse than they are, could they, now?--There, I came very near falling, I declare!" The moans of the sick woman at my side became almost constant toward noon; and she was obliged to surrender her infant wholly to my charge, for the haemorrhage of the day before had returned, and she was fast drifting into unconsciousness. "Water, water!" was the only intelligible cry that left her lips, and that we had to give was warm and brackish, from the occasional lapping of the sea against the barrels, into which it oozed insensibly. The sun shone down hot and brazen, from the lurid heavens, covered with filmy clouds, so equally overspreading it that a thin, gray veil seemed to interpose between us and its scorching rays, scarcely tempering them by its diaphanous medium. Beneath it lay the sea, like a copper shield, smooth and glowing, seething like a boiling caldron, with its level foam, for the long, low-rolling billows lifted themselves but lazily from Ocean's breast, and assumed no distinctness of form or motion. Not the faintest breeze came to relieve the stifling closeness of the atmosphere, or lift the collapsed sail, or furled flag, that clung around our mast. The air shimmered visibly around us, as though undergoing some transformation from the heat, some culinary process, through which it was to be rendered unfit for human lips to breathe. Birds flew low and heavily around the raft, as though their wings met such resistance as fish find in water, alighting occasionally to pick up languidly morsels of rejected food. Still the old negro's crooning hymns went on, recommenced with morning light. To my sad heart, the refrain bore a mournful significance: "In the land of the New Jerusalem There shall be no more sea." She sat, a wrinkled hag, with a leering, repulsive face, with her feet planted firmly on her mattress, her knees elevated, her long, ape-like arms closely embracing these--her fingers, strung with brass and silver rings, intertwined with snake-like flexibility.