The moon had been risen about two hours, when I spied the gleam of water in the bottom of the boat. I was greatly startled, believing that she was leaking. Certainly there had been no water when I first entered her nor down to this minute had I noticed the gleam or heard the noise of it in her. There was a little pewter mug in the stern sheets, a relic of the ship from which the Portuguese had come. I fell to baling with it, and presently emptied the boat. No more water entered, for which at first I was deeply thankful; but after a little I got musing upon how it could have penetrated, seeing that no more came; and then a dreadful suspicion entering my mind, I looked for the jar which the Portuguese had handed into the boat, and saw it lying on its bilge in the bows. I picked it up and shook it; it was empty! It had been corked by a piece of canvas which still remained in the bung, but on the jar capsizing through the jerking of the boat, the water had easily drained out, and it was this precious fluid which I had been feverishly baling and casting overboard! Maddened as I was by this discovery, I had yet sense enough remaining to sop my handkerchief in the little puddle that still damped the bottom of the boat, and to wring the moisture into the pewter measure. But at the outside half a pint was the utmost I recovered, which done I sat me down, my face buried in my hands, with my eyes scorched as though they were seared by the burning tears that rose to them from my full and breaking heart. The night passed. Hour after hour I lay in a sort of stupefaction in the stern sheets, taking no notice of the weather, my eyes fixed upon the stars, a little space of which directly over my head I would crazily essay to number. Once I pressed the handkerchief to my parched lips, but found the damp of it brackish, and threw it from me. But I would not touch the precious drop of water I had preserved. Too bitterly well did I guess how the morrow’s sun would serve me, and the very soul within me seemed to recoil from the temptation to moisten my dry and burning tongue.