The last day of May is come. And now there is a disaster to report:
think of it, reflect upon it, and try to understand how much it means,
when you sit down with your family and pass your eye over your
breakfast-table. Yesterday there were three pints of bread-crumbs; this
morning the little bag is found open and some of the crumbs are missing.
'We dislike to suspect any one of such a rascally act, but there is no
question that this grave crime has been committed. Two days will
certainly finish the remaining morsels. God grant us strength to reach
the American group!' The third mate told me in Honolulu that in these
days the men remembered with bitterness that the 'Portyghee' had devoured
twenty-two days' rations while he lay waiting to be transferred from the
burning ship, and that now they cursed him and swore an oath that if it
came to cannibalism he should be the first to suffer for the rest.
[Diary entry] The captain has lost his glasses, and therefore he
cannot read our pocket prayer-books as much as I think he would
like, though he is not familiar with them.
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