Accidents > Dangers of the deep, or, Narratives of shipwreck and adventure at sea

134 DEATH OP MR. COZENS,
such, that they must eat the creature or starve.
Though their plea was urgent, I could not
help using some alignments to endeavour to
dissuade them from killing him, as his faith¬
ful services and fondness deserved it at my
hands; but, without weighing my arguments,
they took him away by force and killed him ;
upon which, thinking that I had at least as
good a right to a share as the rest, I sat down
with them, and partook of their repast. Three
weeks after that I was glad to make a meal
of his paws and skin, which, upon recollecting
the spot where they had killed him, I found
thrown aside and rotten. The pressing calls
of hunger drove our men to their wit’s end,
and put them upon a variety of devices to
satisfy it. Among the ingenious this way,
one Phips, a boatswain’s mate, having got a
water puncheon, scuttled it; then lashing two
logs, one on each side, set out in quest of ad¬
ventures in this extraordinary and original
piece of embarkation. By this means he
would frequently, when all the rest were
starving, provide himself with wild fowl;
and it must have been very bad weather indeed
which could deter him from putting out to sea
when his occasions required. Sometimes he