Whatever might be their speculations they had one good effect, which was, that they looked upon the youth as a superior and a friend, and most willingly obeyed him. He led them up to the knoll, and, desiring them to scrape away the sand, supplied them again with fresh water and biscuit. Perhaps the very supply, and the way in which it was given to them, excited their astonishment as much as anything. Francisco ate with them, and, selecting from his sea-chest the few tools in his possession, desired them to follow him. The casks were collected and rolled up; the empty ones arranged for the raft; the spars were hauled up and cleared of the rigging, which was carefully separated for lashings; the one or two sails which had been found rolled up on the spars were spread out to dry; and the provisions and articles of clothing, which might be useful, laid together on one side. The negroes worked willingly and showed much intelligence; before the evening closed everything which might be available was secured, and the waves now only tossed about lifeless forms, and the small fragments of timber which could not be serviceable. It would occupy too much time were we to detail all the proceedings of Francisco and the negroes for the space of four days, during which they laboured hard. Necessity is truly the mother of invention, and many were the ingenious resources of the party before they could succeed in forming a raft large enough to carry them and their provisions, with a mast and sail well secured. At length it was accomplished; and on the fifth day Francisco and his men embarked, and, having pushed clear of the bank with poles, they were at last able to hoist their sail to a fine breeze, and steer for the coast before the wind at the rate of about three miles an hour. But it was not until they had gained half a mile from the bank that they were no longer annoyed by the dreadful smell arising from the putrefaction of so many bodies, for to bury them all would have been a work of too great time. The last two days of their remaining on the island, the effluvia had become so powerful as to be a source of the greatest horror and disgust even to the negroes. But before night, when the raft was about eight leagues from the sand-bank, it fell calm, and continued so for the next day, when a breeze sprang up from the south-east, to which they trimmed their sail with their head to the northward. This wind, and the course steered, sent them off from the land, but there was no help for it; and Francisco felt grateful that they had such an ample supply of provisions and water as to enable them to yield to a few days' contrary wind without danger of want. But the breeze continued steady and fresh, and they were now crossing the Bight of Benin; the weather was fine and the sea smooth; the flying-fish rose in shoals and dropped down into the raft, which still forced its way through the water to the northward.