Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy: A weird series of tales of shipwreck and disaster, from the earliest part of the century to the present time, with accounts of providential escapes and heart-rending fatalities.Anonymous
History
Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy: A weird series of tales of shipwreck and disaster, from the earliest part of the century to the present time, with accounts of providential escapes and heart-rending fatalities.
Anonymous
Mutiny; Pirates; Seafaring life; Shipwrecks
An ardent thirst, redoubled in the day by the beams of a burning sun,
consumed us. An officer of the army found by chance a small lemon, and
it may be easily imagined how valuable such a fruit would be to him.
His comrades, in spite of the most urgent entreaties, could not get a
bit of it from him. Signs of rage were already manifested, and had he
not partly listened to the solicitations of those around him, they
would have taken it by force, and he would have perished the victim of
his selfishness. We also disputed about thirty cloves of garlic which
were found in the bottom of a sack. These disputes were for the most
part accompanied with violent menaces, and if they had been prolonged,
we might perhaps have come to the last extremities. There was found
also two small phials, in which was a spirituous liquid for cleaning
the teeth. He who possessed them kept them with care, and gave with
reluctance one or two drops in the palm of the hand. This liquor
which, we think, was a tincture of guiacum, cinnamon, cloves, and
other aromatic substances, produced on our tongues an agreeable
feeling, and for a short while removed the thirst which destroyed us.
Some of us found some small pieces of powder, which made, when put
into the mouth, a kind of coolness. One plan generally employed was to
put into a hat a quantity of sea-water with which we washed our faces
for a while, repeating it at intervals. We also bathed our hair and
held our hands in the water. Misfortune made us ingenious, and each
thought of a thousand means to alleviate his sufferings. Emaciated by
the most cruel privations, the least agreeable feeling was to us a
happiness supreme. Thus we sought with avidity a small empty phial
which one of us possessed, and in which had once been some essence of
roses; and every one as he got hold of it respired with delight the
odor it exhaled, which imparted to his senses the most soothing
impressions. Many of us kept our ration of wine in a small tin cup,
and sucked it out with a quill. This manner of taking it was of great
benefit to us, and allayed our thirst much better than if we had
gulped it off at once.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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