"On and on they sailed. Day after day passed with no sign of land, and no ship to bring them assistance. Their coals were exhausted on the seventeenth day; on the next and the next they suffered terrible thirst, because they could no longer make use of their condenser, and the old chief said that if they found no relief by the twentieth day they would have to give up. "But at ten o'clock in the night of the nineteenth day the boat slid up on a sandy beach, and the party stepped on shore. Fortune willed it that they landed on the beach in front of the French town of Pondicherry; they had seen the lights for an hour or more, but mistook them for stars. "The boat was pulled up high and dry on the beach, which was deserted at that hour. One man was left to guard it, and the other four, with the old man leading, walked in single file through the streets of Pondicherry in search of assistance. "At every few steps the leader called out, 'Does any one speak Burmese?' People stared at him, and some laughed, and thought him insane, but he kept on up and down the streets with his comrades, repeating his inquiry in his own language, for he knew no other--'Does any one speak Burmese?' "For nearly an hour he continued in this way, and just as he was about to give up, and try some other means of making himself understood, some one who spoke Burmese stepped from the crowd and asked what he wanted. "His first inquiry was whether there was an agency of the firm to whom the cargo of salt belonged. Finding there was none, he named other houses of Rangoon with no better luck, and at last asked for the British India Steam Navigation Company. "He went at once to the Company's agency, but it was closed for the night. He was there bright and early next morning, and his first request was for a telegram to be sent to his employers at Rangoon, so that they would know he had not run away with the cargo of salt. He wanted his character vindicated first of all, and then he asked if he and his comrades could be sent to Rangoon, and allowed to pay their passage on arrival, as they had not sufficient money to pay in advance. "Those who heard his story could hardly believe it, especially when they saw the boat in which the five men had come across the Bay of Bengal. But they were fully convinced when a despatch came from the house at Rangoon to send the men back, and draw for expenses. The firm had full faith in the honesty of the old man, as he had been a long time in their employ. "The agent of the French Steamship Company bought their boat for a good price, to keep as a curiosity, and gave them a free passage to Madras; from Madras the British India Company gave them passage to Rangoon, where they arrived safely, and were heroes in the eyes of all their neighbors and friends." Doctor Bronson reminded the captain that there were several instances on record of boats not over twenty feet long that had safely crossed the Atlantic Ocean.