TIT FOR TAT 305 



and intimate acquaintance with death had somewhat hardened 

 them: they cut the flesh from the dead body, took out the heart 

 to drink the blood from it, then sewed up what remained of their 

 shipmate and buried it over the side. 



In two days the flesh was so tainted they dared not eat it, 

 and they drew lots to decide who should be killed to keep the 

 others alive. 



Then came the mirage — their own Massachusetts coast. 

 (There are times when one could believe in a personal Devil.) 



The mate's account follows: 



We daily almost perished under the torrid rays of a meridian sun, to es- 

 cape which we would lie down in the bottom of the boat, cover ourselves 

 over with the sails, and abandon her to the mercy of the waves. Upon at- 

 tempting to rise again, the blood would rush into the head, and an intoxi- 

 cating blindness come over us almost to occasion our suddenly falling down 

 again. 



On February 17th the British brig Indian sighted the mate's 

 boat and took its three survivors on board : they had to be lifted 

 bodily from their boat. Five days later the Nantucket ship, 

 Dauphin, similarly rescued Captain Pollard and one Charles 

 Ramsdale, the only survivors of the captain's boat. The second 

 mate's boat was never heard from — familiar and grisly phrase 

 of all sea history! 



Of the three men left on Ducie's Island, there are conflicting 

 stories. The mate reports that the survivors told the captain 

 of the U.S. frigate Constellation, at Valparaiso, about them, and 

 that he promised to take measures immediately. According to 

 some historians, they were, like the men of the second mate's 

 boat, "never heard from." But there is another account, for 

 the reliability of which I cannot vouch, somewhat as follows: 



At Valparaiso, whither the few survivors of the Essex were 

 brought by their rescuers, one Captain Downes, of the frigate 

 Macedonian, heard of the three men left on Ducie's and resolved 

 to rescue them. He fitted out a schooner and set sail, but at the 

 end of a month the schooner was dismasted and he returned, 

 perforce, to Valparaiso. There he found the ship Surrey, Cap- 

 tain Raine, about to sail for New Holland, a trip in which she 



