their leather belts, their shoes, the sweatbands from their caps,
although both Clayton and Monsieur Thuran had done their best to
convince them that these would only add to the suffering they were
enduring.

Weak and hopeless, the entire party lay beneath the pitiless tropic
sun, with parched lips and swollen tongues, waiting for the death
they were beginning to crave. The intense suffering of the first
few days had become deadened for the three passengers who had
eaten nothing, but the agony of the sailors was pitiful, as their
weak and impoverished stomachs attempted to cope with the bits of
leather with which they had filled them. Tompkins was the first
to succumb. Just a week from the day the LADY ALICE went down the
sailor died horribly in frightful convulsions.

For hours his contorted and hideous features lay grinning back
at those in the stern of the little boat, until Jane Porter could
endure the sight no longer. "Can you not drop his body overboard,
William?" she asked.

Clayton rose and staggered toward the corpse. The two remaining
sailors eyed him with a strange, baleful light in their sunken orbs.
Futilely the Englishman tried to lift the corpse over the side of
the boat, but his strength was not equal to the task.

"Lend me a hand here, please," he said to Wilson, who lay nearest
him.

"Wot do you want to throw 'im over for?" questioned the sailor, in
a querulous voice.