Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. THE OPEN-BOAT NAVIGATION. "The boat is Jower'd with all the haste of hate, With its slight plank between thee and thy fate; Her only cargo such a scant supply As promises the death their hands deny And just enough of water and of bread To kee|), some days, the dying from the dead ; Some cordage, canvass, sails, and lines, and twin. But treasures all to hermits of the brine, Were added after, to the earnest prayer Of thos who saw nr Nope save sea and air; And last, that trembling vassal of the Pole, The feeling compass, Navigation's soul. The launch is crowded with the faithful few That wait theirchief-a melancholy crew: But someretnain'd reluctant on the deck Of that proud vessel, now a moral wreck— And view'd their captain s fate with piteous eyes ; While others scofT'd his augurM miseries, Sneer'd a the prospect of his pigmy sail, And the slight bark, so laden and so frail." Christian had intended to send away his captain and associates in the cutter, and ordered that it should be hoisted out for that purpose, which was done—a small wretched boat, that could hold but eight or ten men at the most, with a very small additional weight; and, what was still worse, she was so worm-eaten and decayed, especially, in the bottom planks, that the probability was, she would have gone down before she had proceeded a mile from the ship. In this " rotten carcass of a boat," not unlike that into which Prospero and his lovely daughter were " hoist," (( not rigg'd, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rau Instinctively had quit it," did Christian intend to cast adrift his late commander and his eighteen innocent companions, or as many of them as she would stow, to find, as they inevitably must have found, a watery grave. But the remonstrances of the master, boa...