WHEN THE FOG LIFTED after midnight the people in the long-boat saw the quarter-boat half a mile to starboard of them.
“Can you see the dinghy?” asked Lestrange of the captain, who was standing up searching the horizon.
“Not a speck,” answered Le Farge. “Damn that Irishman! but for him I’d have got the boats away properly victualled and all; as it is I don’t know what we’ve got aboard. You, Jenkins, what have you got forward there?”
“Two bags of bread and a breaker of water,” answered the steward.
“A breaker of water be sugared!” came another voice; “a breaker half full, you mean.”
Then the steward’s voice: “So it is; there’s not more than a couple of gallons in her.”
“My God!” said Le Farge. “Damn that Irishman!”
“There’s not more than’ll give us two half pannikins apiece all round,
