They permitted the oars, therefore, to remain motionless between the thole pins, themselves sitting listlessly on the seats, most of them with their heads bent despairingly downward.

The Malay alone kept his shining black eyes on the alert, as if despair had not yet prostrated him.
The long sultry day that saw the last of their two sailor comrades, at length came to a close, without any change in their melancholy situation.

The fierce hot sun went down into the bosom of the sea, and was followed by the short tropic twilight.

As the shades of night closed over them, the father, kneeling beside his children, sent up a prayer to Him who still held their lives in His hand; while Murtagh said the Amen; and the dark-skinned Malay, who was a Mohammedan, muttered a similar petition to Allah.

It had been their custom every night and morning, since parting from the foundered ship, and during all their long-protracted perils in the pinnace.
Perhaps that evening's vesper was more fervent than those preceding it; for they felt they could not last much longer, and that all of them were slowly, surely dying.
This night, a thing something unusual, the sky became obscured by clouds.