On the fourth day a dozen more had died, and the survivors were "extremely feeble, and bore upon their faces the stamp of approaching dissolution." Shipwrecked crews have lived much longer than this without food, but the situation of these sufferers was peculiarly dreadful. And yet one of them could say:
This day was serene and the ocean slumbered. Our hearts were in harmony with the comforting aspect of the heavens and received anew a ray of hope. A shoal of flying fish passed under our raft and as there was an infinite number of openings between the pieces which composed it, the fish were entangled in great numbers. We threw ourselves upon them and took about two hundred and put them in an empty barrel. This food seemed delicious, but one man would have required a score. Our first emotion was to give thanks to God for this unhoped for favor.
An ounce of gunpowder was discovered, and the sunshine dried it, so that with a steel and gun-flints a fire was kindled in a wetted cask and some of the little fish were cooked. This was the only food vouchsafed them, a mere shadow of substance among so many, "but the night was made tolerable
