"Then began the nightmare of heat and thirst. The sun that day was pitiless. They had no luck with the wind, which soon fell flat calm; the exertion of rowing added to the misery. Not a drop of rain fell. By noon, the horror of the first day’s thirst had begun to grip them; by nightfall it had them cowed and broken, whining for water. It’s that first day which is always the worst, you know—until the end. Devereux still hoped that he might pick up one of the other boats, and all hands kept a sharp lookout; but the hope died as the hours wore on. The sheer loneliness of the vast Pacific under a brilliant sun oppressed them like a foretaste of death, like a vista of eternity. They made little progress that day. "A night passed, between sleeping and waking; dawn once more showed them a deserted sea. After a couple of hours’ rowing, they threw down the oars in despair. What was the use of making little dabs with a wooden blade at an ocean beyond span or circumference? Devereux says that he, too, was completely disheartened. They rested all that forenoon, waiting for a breeze. By this time the thirst had eaten into their vitals. Spots were dancing before their eyes, and frequently one of the men would insist that he saw a boat on the horizon; but after a while they learned to accept the cruelty of this delusion. "Some time a little after noon, Devereux was in the stern sheets steering; he had persuaded the men to take up the oars again. He was gazing off on the port quarter, in an aimless state of misery, when all at once he thought his mind must be breaking with the thirst. A vision swam before him—a vision of a peaceful island, fringed with palm trees, crowned by a low green hill, all shimmering with heat and inverted in the sky. He says he gazed at it a long time without daring to speak; he was afraid the others wouldn’t be able to see it, afraid it wasn’t real. Finally he could stand the suspense no longer. "’Look!’ he cried, pointing ’Is anything there?’ "And they saw it, too. For it was nothing but the mirage of an actual island, an indeterminate distance away. It hung in the sky like a mysterious apparition. They regarded it fixedly, with glances almost hostile, as if questioning its integrity; but the vision persisted. Then they turned the boat, and rowed like madmen throughout the afternoon. The mirage had faded in the course of an hour; but Devereux urged them on by arguments and promises, explaining the nature of the phenomenon and enlarging on their chances of deliverance. Hadn’t they all seen it? It couldn’t be far off; it must lie somewhere along the line of the compass bearing that he had taken.