I was right.  The surgeon bared arm and knife and prepared to open a great vein.  First, however, he spoke a few words.

“I am a native of Norfolk in the Virginias,” he said, “where I expect I have now a wife and three children living.  The only favour that I have to request of you is, that should it please God to deliver either of you from your perilous situation, and should you be so fortunate as to reach once more your native country, that you would acquaint my unfortunate family with my wretched fate.”

Next he requested courteously of us a few minutes in which to arrange his affairs with God.  Neither Captain Nicholl nor I could utter a word, but with streaming eyes we nodded our consent.

Without doubt Arnold Bentham was the best collected of the three of us.  My own anguish was prodigious, and I am confident that Captain Nicholl suffered equally.  But what was one to do?  The thing was fair and proper and had been decided by God.

But when Arnold Bentham had completed his last arrangements and made ready to do the act, I could contain myself no longer, and cried out: 

“Wait!  We who have endured so much surely can endure a little more.  It is now mid-morning.  Let us wait until twilight.  Then, if no event has appeared to change our dreadful destiny, do you Arnold Bentham, do as we have agreed.”

He looked to Captain Nicholl for confirmation of my suggestion, and Captain Nicholl could only nod.  He could utter no word, but in his moist and frosty blue eyes was a wealth of acknowledgment I could not misread.

I did not, I could not, deem it a crime, having so determined by fair drawing of lots, that Captain Nicholl and myself should profit by the death of Arnold Bentham.  I could not believe that the love of life that actuated us had been implanted in our breasts by aught other than God.  It was God’s will, and we His poor creatures could only obey and fulfil His will.  And yet, God was kind.  In His all-kindness He saved us from so terrible, though so righteous, an act.

Scarce had a quarter of an hour passed, when a fan of air from the west, with a hint of frost and damp in it, crisped on our cheeks.  In another five minutes we had steerage from the filled sail, and Arnold Bentham was at the steering sweep.

“Save what little strength you have,” he had said.  “Let me consume the little strength left in me in order that it may increase your chance to survive.”

And so he steered to a freshening breeze, while Captain Nicholl and I lay sprawled in the boat’s bottom and in our weakness dreamed dreams and glimpsed visions of the dear things of life far across the world from us.

It was an ever-freshening breeze of wind that soon began to puff and gust.  The cloud stuff flying across the sky foretold us of a gale.  By midday Arnold Bentham fainted at the steering, and, ere the boat could broach in the tidy sea already running, Captain Nicholl and I were at the steering sweep with all the four of our weak hands upon it.  We came to an agreement, and, just as Captain Nicholl had drawn the first lot by virtue of his office, so now he took the first spell at steering.  Thereafter the three of us spelled one another every fifteen minutes.  We were very weak and we could not spell longer at a time.