The sailors groaned, lamented, and cursed.
The sun baked and blistered, and the water glared.
The sails being useless, the sailors rigged them as an awning, and salt water was constantly thrown over them.
Mr.Hazel took a baler and drenched his own clothes and Miss Rolleston's upon their bodies.

This relieved the hell of thirst in some degree.

But the sailors could not be persuaded to practice it.
In the afternoon Hazel took Miss Rolleston's Bible from her wasted hands, and read aloud the forty-second Psalm.
When he had done, one of the sailors asked him to pass the Bible forward.
He did so; and in half an hour the leaves were returned him; the vellum binding had been cut off, divided, and eaten.
He looked piteously at the leaves, and, after a while, fell upon his knees and prayed silently.
He rose, and, with Miss Rolleston's consent, offered the men the leaves as well.

"It is the Bread of Life for men's souls, not their bodies," said he.

"But God is merciful; I think he will forgive you; for your need is bitter." Cooper replied that the binding was man's, but the pages were God's; and, either for this or another more obvious reason, the leaves were declined for food.
All that afternoon Hazel was making a sort of rough spoon out of a fragment of wood.
The night that followed was darker than usual, and, about midnight, a hand was laid on Helen Rolleston's shoulder and a voice whispered--"Hush! say nothing.