"Not one of them had ever been at sea before; they were all from the upper country, and some of them had not even heard there was any water in the world beyond their own river. The oldest of the party was captain of the boat; he had heard something about 'the black water' that was so salt as to poison those who drank it, but beyond that he had very little information concerning it. [Illustration: OUT ON THE WATERS.] "He had no idea in what direction he should steer to reach land, but remembered that it was necessary to keep a straight course to get anywhere. Whether to go east, west, north, or south, he could not say, and in fact he hardly knew the points of compass. He had no compass, or anything of the sort, and so he concluded that to steer properly he should keep the sun constantly on his left hand. It was unfortunate that he did not decide to keep the sun on the right hand, as he would then have brought up on the coast of Burmah, while the course he took was westward, across the Bay of Bengal. "The boat was loaded with salt belonging to an English house in Rangoon, and consigned to their agency up the river. The old man ordered the salt thrown overboard to lighten the boat; then he divided the provisions, giving each man his share. The sail was spread to the light wind that was blowing, and with the sun on the left the boat moved on. [Illustration: A WRECK AT SEA.] "The only provisions were a couple of bags of rice, and with care this could be made to last a month. They had very little fresh water, and the old man's ingenuity was set to work to devise means of collecting some. They had a little furnace on some earth in the middle of the boat where they did their cooking, and they had a bag or two of charcoal. Whenever they were engaged in cooking their daily allowance of rice, the _padrone_ caused his companions to dip a couple of tin plates in the sea; when these plates were cooled as much as the sea-water could cool them, they were wiped dry and held in the steam that rose from the rice-kettle, and in this way a few drops of water could be obtained. As soon as they were heated, the water that had accumulated on the plates would be wiped off, and the dipping in the sea would be renewed. Enough water was collected in this way to prevent their dying of thirst, but not enough to save them from considerable suffering. Of course the rice contained a good deal of water which it absorbed in the process of cooking: the usual mode of preparing rice in the East is to steam it above a boiling kettle, and not to place it in the water, after the American manner. Occasionally they were surrounded by flying-fish, but they never caught any, though they tried to do so. [Illustration: A FLYING-FISH.]