One evening in the latitude of Portugal, when they were far from the regular route of navigation, a column of smoke and flames suddenly swept the deck, breaking through the hatchways and devouring the sails.  While Ferragut at the head of a band of negroes was trying to get control of the fire, the captain and the German crew were escaping from the ship in two prepared lifeboats.  Ferragut felt sure that the fugitives were laughing at seeing him run about the deck that was beginning to warp and send up fire through all its cracks.

Without ever knowing exactly how, he found himself in a boat with some negroes and different objects piled together with the precipitation of flight,—­a half-empty barrel of biscuits and another that contained only water.

They rowed all one night, having behind them as their unlucky star the burning boat that was sending its blood-red gleams across the water.  At daybreak they noted on the sun’s disk some light, black, wavy lines.  It was land ... but so far away!

For two days they wandered over the moving crests and gloomy valleys of the blue desert.  Several times Ferragut collapsed in mortal lethargy, with his feet in the water filling the bottom of the boat.  The birds of the sea were tracing spirals around this floating hearse, following it with vigorous strokes of the wing, and uttering croakings of death.  The waves raised themselves slowly and sluggishly over the boat’s edge as though wishing to contemplate with their sea-green eyes this medley of white and dark bodies.  The ship-wrecked men rowed with nervous desperation; then they lay down inert, recognizing the uselessness of their efforts, lost in the great immensity.

The mate, drowsing on the hard stern, finally smiled with closed eyes.  It was all a bad dream.  He was sure of awaking in his bed surrounded with the familiar comforts of his stateroom.  And when he opened his eyes, the harsh reality made him break forth into desperate orders, which the Africans obeyed as mechanically as though they were still sleeping.

“I do not want to die!...  I ought not to die!” asserted his inner monitor in a brazen tone.

They shouted and made unavailing signals to distant boats that disappeared from the great watery expanse without ever seeing them.  Two negroes died of the cold.  Their corpses floated many hours near the boat as if unable to separate themselves from it.  Then they were drawn under by an invisible tugging, and some triangular fins passed over the water’s surface, cutting it like knives at the same time that its depths were darkened by swift, ebony shadows.

When at last they approached land, Ferragut realized that death was nearer here than on the high sea.  The coast rose up before them like an immense wall.  Seen from the boat it appeared to cover half the sky.  The long oceanic undulation became a ravenous wave upon encountering the outer bulwarks of these barren islands, breaking in the depths of their caves, and forming cascades of foam that rolled around them from top to bottom, raising up furious columns of spray with the report of a cannonade.