There was not only no water, but not a drop of liquid unconsumed of any kind or description whatever, saving and excepting some new rum, which the men had freely made use of at first, until two of them died raving mad in consequence. When I got on board, the cask was lying open on the tap, and, perishing as they were, not one of them could swallow a drop of it if they had tried; they said it was like taking aquafortis or melted lead into their mouths, when at any time they were driven, by the fierceness of their sufferings, to attempt assuaging their thirst with it. I had not been five minutes on board, when the captain seemed to go mad altogether. "My poor wife, sir--oh, God, she is dying in the cabin, sir--she may be dead--she must be dead--but I dare not go below to look at her.--Oh, as you hope for mercy at your dying day, hail your people to make haste, sir--half an hour may be too late"--and the poor fellow dashed himself down on the deck, writhing about, like a crushed reptile, in a paroxysm of the most intense agony; while the men, who were all clustered half-naked in the bows, with wet blankets on their shoulders, in the hope that nature would in this way absorb some moisture, and thus alleviate their sufferings, were peering out with their feverish and blood-shot eyes, and wan faces, at the felucca; watching every motion on board with the most breathless anxiety. "There, there--there is the cask on deck--they are lowering it into the boat--they have shoved off--oh, great God in Heaven, we shall be saved after all!"--and the poor fellows raised a faint hurrah, and closed in on me, some shaking my hands, others dropping on their knees to bless me; while one poor creature lay choking on the hard deck in a fit of hysterical laughter, as if he had been a weakly woman. The boat could not possibly be back under ten minutes; so I went below into the cabin, and never did I behold such a heart-rending sight. The small table that had stood in the centre had been removed; and there, stretched on a coarse wet blanket, lay a half-naked female--pale and emaciated--her long hair dishevelled, and hanging over her face, and down her back, in wet clotted strands, with a poor miserable infant puling and nuzzling at her wasted breast; while a black woman, herself evidently deep sunk in the same suffering, was sprinkling salt water from a pail on the unhappy creature and her child. "Oh, massa," cried the faithful negress--"oh, massa, give missis some water, or him dead--I strong, can last some time yet--but poor missis"--and here she sobbed, as if her heart would have burst; but the fountains of her tears were dried up. The white female was unable to raise her head--she lay moaning on the deck, and mumbling audibly with her dry and shrunken lips, as if they had been ossified; but she could not speak.