CHAPTER XLIV.
JANUARY 15th .-- After this further shattering of our excited hopes death alone now stares us in the face; slow and lingering as that death may be, sooner or later it must inevitably come.
To-day some clouds that rose in the west have brought us a few puffs of wind; and in spite of our prostration, we appreciate the moderation, slight as it is, in the temperature.

To my parched throat the air seemed a little less trying but it is now seven days since the boatswain took his haul of fish, and during that period we have eaten nothing even Andre Letourneur finished yesterday the last morsel of the biscuit which his sorrowful and self-denying father had entrusted to my charge.
Jynxstrop the negro has broken loose from his confinement, but Curtis has taken no measures for putting him again under restraint.

It is not to be apprehended that the miserable fellow and his accomplices, weakened as they are by their protracted fast, will attempt to do us any mischief now.
Some huge sharks made their appearance to-day, cleaving the water rapidly with their great black fins.

The monsters came close up to the edge of the raft, and Flaypole, who was leaning over, narrowly escaped having his arm snapped off by one of them.

I could not help regarding them as living sepulchres, which ere long might swallow up our miserable carcasses; yet, withal, I profess that my feelings were rather those of fascination than of horror.
The boatswain, who stood with clenched teeth and dilated eye, regarded these sharks from quite another point of view.