Is nothing so bad when you 've cover to 'and, an' leave an' likin' to shout;
But to stand an' be still to the Birken'ead drill is a damn tough billet to chew,
An' they done it, the Jollies—'Er Majesty's Jollies—soldier an' sailor too.
The wretched voyage of the Wager's barge was so delayed by head winds and battering seas and the necessity of landing often in search of food that all hope of reaching a Spanish port was relinquished, and finally they put about and trailed wearily back to the island and the wreck of the Wager after two months of futile endeavor. The superstition of the sea perturbed these childish sailormen, who laid their distresses to the fact that one of the crew who was murdered on the island had never been given burial. Therefore the first errand when they tottered ashore at their old camp was to dig a grave and say a prayer.
They were so tormented with famine that they talked, or rather whispered, of choosing one of their number by lot, that dreadful old expedient, and boiling him for a square meal; but the discovery of some rotten beef cast up from the wreck averted this procedure. They existed for a fortnight, and then a party of Indians appeared, among them a chief. He spoke a little Spanish, and an officer of the
