[8] _Quarterly Review_, No. 89. [9] One person turns his back on the object that is to be divided; another then points separately to the portions, at each of them asking aloud, 'Who shall have this?' to which the first answers by naming somebody. This impartial method of distribution gives every man an equal chance of the best share. Bligh used to speak of the great amusement the poor people had at the beak and claws falling to his share. [10] If Bligh here meant to deny the fact of men, in extreme cases, destroying each other for the sake of appeasing hunger, he is greatly mistaken. The fact was but too well established, and to a great extent, on the raft of the French frigate _Meduse_, when wrecked on the coast of Africa, and also on the rock in the Mediterranean, when the _Nautilus_ frigate was lost. There may be a difference between men, in danger of perishing by famine, when in robust health, and men like those of the _Bounty_, worn by degrees to skeletons, by protracted famine, who may thus have become equally indifferent to life or death. [11] The escape of the _Centaur's_ boat, perhaps, comes nearest to it. When the _Centaur_ was sinking, Captain Inglefield and eleven others, in a small leaky boat, five feet broad, with one of the gunwales stove, nearly in the middle of the Western Ocean, without compass, without quadrant, without sail, without great-coat or cloak, all very thinly clothed, in a gale of wind, with a great sea running, and the winter fast approaching,--the sun and stars, by which alone they could shape their course, sometimes hidden for twenty-four hours;--these unhappy men, in this destitute and hopeless condition, had to brave the billows of the stormy Atlantic, for nearly a thousand miles. A blanket, which was by accident in the boat, served as a sail, and with this they scudded before the wind, in expectation of being swallowed up by every wave; with great difficulty the boat was cleared of water before the return of the next great sea; all of the people were half drowned, and sitting, except the balers, at the bottom of the boat. On quitting the ship the distance of Fayal was two hundred and sixty leagues, or about nine hundred English miles. Their provisions were a bag of bread, a small ham, a single piece of pork, two quart bottles of water, and a few of French cordials. One biscuit, divided into twelve morsels, was served for breakfast, and the same for dinner; the neck of a bottle broken off, with the cork in, supplied the place of a glass; and this filled with water was the allowance for twenty-four hours for each man.