Our greatest want was water. We fancied that, if we could have had a
few drops to cool our lips, we could have borne anything else. Some
drank salt water, against the warning of the mate, and in consequence
increased their sufferings.
Worn out with fatigue, the crew every hour grew weaker, so that there
was scarcely a man left with strength to steer, much more to go aloft.
Night came on to increase our difficulties. The stranger proved to be
the _Mary_, bound from Bristol also to Quebec. She at first kept a
short distance ahead, showing a light over her stern by which we might
steer.
I ought to have said that the captain had taken the sextant,
chronometer, and charts with him, and that in their mad outbreak the
emigrants had destroyed the binnacle and the compasses in it, so that we
had the _Mary's_ light alone to depend on. Mr Bell had divided those
who remained of the crew, and some of the emigrants willing to exert
themselves, into two watches.
I was to keep the middle watch. I lay down on the deck aft to sleep on
one of the only few dry or clean spots I could find. I was roused up at
midnight, and just as I had got on my feet, I heard a voice sing out,
"Where's the _Mary's_ light?" I ran forward. It was nowhere to be
seen.