Chapter 50

CHAPTER L.

JANUARY 23rd.--Only eleven of us now remain; and the probability
is very great that every day must now carry off at least its one
victim, and perhaps more. The end of the tragedy is rapidly
approaching, and save for the chance, which is next to an
impossibility, of our sighting land, or being picked up by a
passing vessel, ere another week has elapsed not a single
survivor of the "Chancellor" will remain.

The wind freshened considerably in the night, and it is now
blowing pretty briskly from the north-east. It has filled our
sail, and the white foam in our wake is an indication that we are
making some progress. The captain reckons that we must be
advancing at the rate of about three miles an hour.

Curtis and Falsten are certainly in the best condition amongst
us, and in spite of their extreme emaciation they bear up
wonderfully under the protracted hardships we have all endured.
Words cannot describe the melancholy state to which poor Miss
Herbey bodily is reduced; her whole being seems absorbed into her
soul, but that soul is brave and resolute as ever, living in
heaven rather than on earth. The boatswain, strong, energetic
man that he was, has shrunk into a mere shadow of his former
self, and I doubt whether any one would recognize him to be the
same man. He keeps perpetually to one corner of the raft, his
head dropped upon his chest, and his long, bony hands lying upon
knees that project sharply from his worn-out trowsers. Unlike
Miss Herbey, his spirit seems to have sunk into apathy, and it is
at times difficult to believe that he is living at all, so
motionless and statue-like does he sit.

Silence continues to reign upon the raft. Not a sound, not even
a groan, escapes our lips. We do not exchange ten words in the
course of the day, and the few syllables that our parched tongue
and swollen lips can pronounce are almost unintelligible. Wasted
and bloodless, we are no longer human beings; we are spectres.