“We went into the boat with nothing but what we wore, and that was little.  Some of us had no coats, and some no hats, and others were without any shoes.  We were in rags from the terrible fight with the logs and the sea.  The old man went below to get his medicine-chest.  He threw away the medicine, and put his log and the ship’s papers in it.  He took up his chronometer to bring it, when a wave like that which got the cook and the boy knocked the skipper over and lost the chronometer.  All he got away with was his sextant and compass and his watch, which was as good as a chronometer.

“We got into the boat at four o’clock.  The boat had been put into the water under the stern and made fast by a rope to the taffrail.  We climbed out the spankerboom and slid down another rope.  The seas were terrific, and it was a mercy that we did not fall in.  We had to take a chance and jump when the boat came under us.  Last came the old man, and took the tiller.  He had the oars manned, and gave the order to let go.  That was a terrible moment for all of us, to cast loose from the schooner, bad as she was.  There we were all alone in the middle of the ocean, bruised from the struggle on deck, and almost dying from exhaustion and already hungry as wolves.  In twenty-four hours we had had only a cup of coffee and a biscuit.

“It was very dark, and we had no light.  We were, however, glad to leave the El Dorado, because our suffering on her for weeks had been as much as we could bear.  The last I saw of the schooner she was just a huge, black lump on the black waters.  We rose on a swell, and she sank into a valley out of sight.

“The captain spoke to us now:  ‘We have a good chance for life,’ he said.  ’I have looked over the chart, and it shows that Easter Island is about nine hundred miles northeast by east.  If we are all together in trying, we may reach there.’

“None of us had ever been to Easter Island, and hardly any of us had ever heard of it.  It looked like a long pull there.  All night the captain and the mate took turns in steering, while we, in turn, pulled at the oars.  We did not dare put a rag of canvas on her, for the wind was big still.  The old man said that as we had both latitude and longitude to run, we would run out the latitude first, and then hope for a slant to the land.  We were then, he said, in latitude 31 south, and longitude 121 west.  That being so, we had about three hundred miles to go south and about six hundred east.  He said that Pitcairn Island was but six hundred miles away, but that the prevailing winds would not let us sail there.  We set the course, then, for Easter Island.  We wondered whether Easter Island had a place to land, and whether there were any people on it.  There might be savages and cannibals.