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In the midst of these horrors, this complication of want and excess, of distraction and despair, they espied another sail. Every eye was instantly turned towards it, and immoveably fixed upon it; every one broke out into ecstasies of joy and devotion; devotion among such people, and in such circumstances, naturally deviated into superstition; some of the company observed it was Christmas day, and seemed to think that the season had an influence on their approaching deliverance, and was appropriated to their temporal as well as spiritual salvation. A proper signal of distress was hung out, and about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, they had the unspeakable satisfaction of being near enough to the ship to communicate their situation.

The weather was now calm, and the captain promised them such relief as was in his power, which he extended only to some bread, being himself contracted in every other article. This bread, however, he delayed with the most unpromising insensibility to bestow, upon pretence that he was making an observation, which it was necessary to finish; the poor famished wretches therefore waited an hour in the most anxious suspence, yet in perfect confidence of supply; and the captain being quite exhausted with hunger, fatigue, and infirmity, finding his eyes fail him, and having a severe rheumatism, in his knees, went down to rest himself in the cabin.

He expected every moment to hear that the promised biscuit was coming on board; but he had not waited a quarter of an hour before his people came running down with looks of unutterable despair, and told him in accents scarcely intelligible, that the vessel was making away as fast as she could without affording them even the little relief she had promised.

At this terrible intelligence, the captain crawled upon deck, and found it was true. The wretch who commanded the vessel, had even crowded more sail than he spread before, and in less than five hours was out of sight.

As long as the poor creatures, whom he had deserted to distraction and famine, could retain the least trace of him, they hung about the shrouds, and ran from one part of the ship to the other, with frantic gestures and ghastly looks, to collect more visible signs of distress; they pierced the air with their cries while they could yet be heard, and implored assistance with still louder lamentations, as the distance between them increased; but the vessel, under the direction of inexorable inhumanity pursued its course, and no farther notice was taken of their distress.

Captain Harrison, from some principle which he thought laudable, and upon which, therefore, it was laudable in him to act, suppressed the name of the man by whom he was treated with this unprovoked and unrelenting barbarity. But, surely, to screen such a wretch from universal detestation and infamy, a punishment by no means disproportioned to his crime, except that it should have been greater, if greater could have been inflicted, has a tendency directly contrary to all laws and institutions that have been made by the wisest and best of mankind, for the benefit of society. We are, indeed, commanded to "love our enemies, and to do good to those who despitefully use us." But this injunction, taken literally, would operate directly contrary to the spirit and intention of Christianity, by precluding all punishment, and, consequently encouraging every species of wickedness by which human nature can be made infamous or miserable. Not to punish the guilty, except where there are alleviating circumstances, which would make "right too rigid harden into wrong," is eventually the worst cruelty, and the most flagitious injustice. It is cruelty to forgive a murderer, because it is laying another bosom open to the knife, and encouraging another hand to strike. It is also unjust, because it is with

holding from society the benefit which it has a right to claim from every individual, as far as the individual has power to bestow it. It was, therefore, for the sake equally of justice and of mercy, to deter others from contracting the same guilt, and preserve others from being deserted in the same distress, the duty of Captain Harrison to hang up at least the name of this offender, lest, after suffering by his barbarity, he should have been deemed, in some sense, a partner of his crime.

The crew, once more deserted, and cut off from their last hope, were still prompted by an instinctive love of life, to preserve it as long as its preservation was possible. The only living creature on board the vessel, besides themselves, were two pigeons and a cat. The pigeons were killed immediately, and divided among them for their Christmas dinner.

The next day they killed their cat, and as there were nine to partake of the repast, they divided her into nine parts, which they disposed by lot.

It would naturally be supposed by those who have suffered only such distress as is common to men, that anxiety, terror, anguish, and indignation, all the passions that upon such a desertion could have contended in the breast, would have taken away at least that appetite which makes food pleasing, even while nature was sinking for want of sustenance; yet Captain Harrison declares, that the head of this poor cat having fallen to his share, he never eat any thing that he thought so delicious in his life.

The next day the people began to scrape the ship's bottom for barnacles, but the waves had beaten off most of those above water, and the men were too weak to hang long over the ship's side. During all this time the poor wretches were drunk, and a sense of their condition seemed to evaporate in execration and blasphemy. While they were continually heating wine in the steerage, the captain subsisted upon the dirty water at the bottom of the cask, half a pint of which, with a few drops of Turlington's balsam, was his whole subsistence for twenty-four hours.

In this condition he waited for death, the approach of which, he says, he could have contemplated without much emotion, if it had not been for the difficulties in which he should have left his wife and children.

He still flattered himself, at intervals, with some random hope that another vessel might come within sight of them, and take them on board; but the time allotted for the experiment was apparently short, as well because they had nothing to eat, as because the ship was very leaky, and the men were too feeble, and indeed, too drunk to keep the water under by working at the pumps. They suffered another aggravation of their calamity, which will scarcely occur to a reader; as they had devoured every eatable on board, they had neither candle nor oil; and it being the depth of winter, when they had not perfect day-light eight hours in the four-and-twenty, they passed the other sixteen in total darkness, except the glimmering light of their fire. Still, however, by the help of their only sail, they made a little way; but on the 28th of December, another storm overtook them, which blew this only sail to rags, and carried it overboard. The vessel now lay quite like a wreck in the water, and was wholly at the mercy of the winds and waves.

How they subsisted from this time to the thirteenth of January, sixteen days, does not appear. Their biscuit had been long exhausted; the last bit of meat which they tasted was their cat, on the 26th of December; all their candle-fat and oil was devoured on the twenty eighth; and they could procure no barnacles from the ship's side; yet, on the 13th of January they were all alive; and the mate, at the head of the people, came in the evening to the captain in

his cabin, half drunk indeed, but with sufficient sensibility to express the horror of their purpose in their countenance. They said they could hold out no longer; that their tobacco was exhausted; that they had eaten up all the leather belonging to the pump, and even the buttons from their jackets; and that now they had no means of preventing their perishing together, but casting lots which of them should perish for the sustenance of the rest; they therefore hoped he would concur in the measure, and desired he would favour them with his determination immediately.

The captain perceiving they were in liquor, endeavoured to sooth them from their purpose as well as he could; desired they would endeavour to get some sleep, and said, that if Providence did not interpose in their favour, he would consult farther upon the subject the next morning.

This mild attempt to divert them from their design, only rendered them outrageous; and they swore, with execrations of peculiar horror, that what was to be done must be done immediately; that it was indifferent to them whether he acquiesced or dissented, and that though they had paid him the compliment of acquainting him with their resolution, they would compel him to take his chance with the rest: for general misfortune, they said, put an end to personal distinction.

The captain not being in a condition to resist, told them that they must do as they pleased, but that he would, on no account, give orders for the death of the person on whom the lot might fall, nor partake of so horrid a repast.

Upon this they left him abruptly, and went into the steerage; but, in a few minutes came back, and told him that they had taken a chance for their lives, and that the lot had fallen on the negro, who was part of the cargo.

The little time taken to cast the lot, and the private manner of conducting the decision, gave the captain strong suspicions that they had not dealt fairly by the victim. The poor fellow, however, knowing what had been determined against him, and seeing one of the crew loading a pistol to dispatch him, ran to the captain, begging that he would endeavour to save his life. But the captain could only regret his want of power to protect him, and he saw him the next moment dragged into the steerage, where he was almost immediately shot through the head.

Having made a large fire, they began to cut him up almost as soon as he was dead, intending to fry his entrails for supper; but one of the foremast men, whose name was James Campbell, being ravenously impatient for food, tore the liver out of the body, and devoured it raw, notwithstanding the fire was at hand, where it might have been dressed in a few minutes.

They continued busy the principal part of the night with their feast, and did not retire till two in the morning.

About eight o'clock the next day, the mate went to the captain, to ask his orders about pickling the body. This, the captain said, he considered as an instance of great brutality; and was so much shocked at it, that he took up a pistol, and swore in his turn, that he would send his mate after the negro, if he did not retire. It was to be regretted that he did not make the same effort to save the poor fellows life, that he did to prevent pickling his body. The best thing he could have done when he was dead, was, to give such orders as might make the food, that was so dearly obtained, go as far as possible, that it might be longer before they were again urged by the same horrid necessity to commit another murder; and pickling the body seems to be the best thing that could have been done with that view.

As the captain, however, would not give his advice, the crew took care of

their provisions without it, and having all consulted together, they cut the body into small pieces, and pickled it, after throwing the head and fingers overboard, by common consent.

How the captain subsisted all this time, from the 25th of December to the 17th of January does not appear; but as it is certain that total abstinence would have killed him in much less time, we must suppose the dirty water and drops kept him alive.

On the third day after the death of the negro, Campbell, the midshipman, who had devoured his liver raw, died raving mad. This the crew imputed to his impatient voracity; and as their hunger was now kept under, and they had still some food in store, they were more under the government of reason, and more impressed by the apprehension of danger, yet nearer than that of perishing for want of food: dreading, therefore, the consequence of eating Campbell's body. they, with whatever reluctance, threw it overboard.

On the next day, the 17th of January, as they were preparing their dinner, by frying or boiling some of the body, they said of the captain, "D-n him, though he would not consent to our having any meat, let us give him some;" and immediately one of them came into the cabin, and offered him a steak.

This offer he rejected with resentment and menaces, which certainly it did not deserve; for they offered him nothing, but what they thought necessity justified the acceptance of, as the only condition of life: if he had rejected the offer with grief and abhorrence, the passion would have suited the occasion. The food, he says, he held in horror, but he honestly confesses, that sickness had then taken away his desire to eat, and that therefore there was not much merit in his abstinence.

As the negro's carcase was husbanded with severe œconomy it lasted the crew, now consisting of six persons, from the 19th to the 26th of January; when they were again reduced to total abstinence except their wine; this they endured till the 29th, and then the mate came again to the captain, at the head of the people, and told him that the negro's body having been totally consumed some days, and no ship having appeared, it was now become necessary that they should cast lots a second time. It was better to die separately, they said, than all at once, as some might possibly survive by the expedient they proposed, till a ship might take them up. The captain again endeavoured to reason them out of their purpose, but without success; and therefore, considering if they managed the lot without him, as they had done before, he might not have fair play, he consented to manage it himself; he therefore called them all into his cabin, where he was in bed, and having with great difficulty raised himself up, he caused the lots to be drawn in the same manner that the lottery tickets are drawn at Guildhall.

The lot fell upon one David Flat, a foremast-man. The shock of the decision was so great, that the whole company remained motionless and silent for a considerable time, and probably would have done so much longer, if the victim himself, who appeared perfectly resigned, had not expressed himself to this effect: "My dear friends, mess-mates, and fellow sufferers, all I have to beg of you, is to dispatch me as soon as you did the negro, and to put me to as little torture as possible." Then turning to one Doud, the man who shot the negro; "It is my desire," says he, "that you should shoot me." Doud reluctantly consented. The victim then begged a short time to prepare himself for death, to which his companions most willingly agreed. Flat was greatly respected by the whole ship's company, and, during this interval, they seemed inclined not to insist upon his life; yet finding no alterna

tive but to perish with him, and having in some measure lulled their sense of horror at the approaching scene by new draughts of wine, they prepared for the execution; and a fire was kindled in the steerage to dress their first meal as soon as their companion should become their food.

Yet still as the dreadful moment approached, their compunction increased, and friendship and humanity at length became stronger than hunger and death. They determined that Flat should live, at least till eleven o'clock the next morning, hoping, as they said, that the divine goodness would in the mean time open some other source of relief; at the same time they begged the captain to read prayers, a task, which, with the utmost effort of his collected strength, he was just able to perform.

As soon as prayers were over, he lay down ready to faint, and the company went immediately to their unfortunate friend Flat. The captain could hear them talk to him with great earnestness and affection; expressing their hopes that God would interpose for his preservation, and assuring him, that though they never yet could catch a fish, yet they would put out all their hooks again to try if any relief could be procured.

Foor Flat, however, could derive little comfort from the concern they expressed, and it is not improbable that their expressions of friendship and affection increased the agitation of his mind: such, however, it was as he could not sustain; for before midnight he grew almost totally deaf, and by four o'clock in the morning was raving mad.

His messmates, who discovered the alteration, debated whether it would not be an act of humanity to dispatch him immediately, but the first resolution of sparing him till eleven prevailed.

About eight in the morning, as the Captain was ruminating in his cabin on the fate of this unhappy wretch, who had but three hours to live, two of his people came hastily down with uncommon ardour in their looks, and seizing both his hands, fixed their eyes upon him without saying a syllable. The Captain, who recollected that they had thrown Campbell's body overboard, notwithstanding their necessities, for fear of catching his madness, now apprehending that fearing to eat Flat for the same reason, they were come to sacrifice him in his stead; he therefore disengaged himself by a sudden effort, and snatching up a pistol stood on his defence. The poor men guessing his mistake, made shift to tell him, that their behaviour was merely the effect of surprise and joy, that they had discovered a sail, and that the sight had so overcome them, they were unable to speak.

They said, that the sail appeared to be a large vessel, that it was to the leeward, and stood for them in as fair a direction as could be wished. The rest of the crew came down immediately afterwards, and confirmed the report of a sail, but said that she seemed to bear away from them upon a contrary course. The account of a vessel being in sight of signals on whatever course she steered, struck the Captain with such excessive and tumultuous joy, that he was very near expiring under it. As soon as he could speak, he directed his people to make every possible signal of distress; the ship itself indeed was a signal of the most striking kind, but he was apprehensive the people at a distance might conclude that there was nothing alive on board, and so stand away without coming near it.

His orders were obeyed with the utmost alacrity; and as he lay in his cabin, he had the inexpressible happiness of hearing them jumping upon deck, and crying out, "She nighs us! she nighs us! she is standing this way!"

The approach of the ship being more and more manifest every moment, their

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