"Poor Lobu!" he murmured.
"Lucky Lobu!" said Jack to himself, thinking of the slow, suffering death from thirst which probably awaited them.
"Now, Jim," he continued aloud, "you've got to turn in. It's your watch below."
"We'll all be on watch below soon, I suppose," said the boy slowly, in a low tone.
"Me tink rain to-mollah!" suddenly put in Tari. The Kanaka knew well that the sky never looked more settled and less like rain, but with kindly nature he tried to instil hope.
Broncho, sitting in the stern, looked at the Marquesan and slowly lowered his left eyelid.
"You bet Tari's right. I sorter feels somehow as if we're goin' to have a regular deluge. These here tropical downfalls is that swift an' powerful, they're liable to swamp the boat a whole lot," he remarked, with the quiver of a smile.
Jim lay back on the blankets, but his nerves had been too shaken for sleep; and, as Jack watched the boy's wide-open, feverish eyes, staring vacantly at the brilliant lamps of heaven, he shook his head sadly. Then, determined to prevent the boy from pondering on their gloomy future, he began to relate the story of the heavens in a low, husky voice; and so successful was he with his old legends, that for the greater part of the night he had Jim and Broncho listening with eager attention, wholly oblivious of their desperate position as they searched the skies for a particular constellation, and then drank in Jack's half-forgotten classic yarns.
The sun rose, a great red ball, into the unhealthy blue of the heavens, and found the castaways nearer their end.
All through that baking day Jim rambled in the realms of fancy, speaking so thickly in his sufferings that the disjointed, wandering sentences could not be understood.