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Though I no longer felt hunger or much pain, the night seemed interminably long. The moon came up at about ten o’clock, dead astern of us, and shone full in my face. I dozed, awoke, attempted to stretch my cramped legs, and dozed again. Sometimes I heard Nelson muttering in his sleep. The captain managed to doze for a time in the early hours of the night; when the moon was about two hours up, he relieved Fryer at the helm. The moon was at its zenith, from which I judged the time to be four in the morning, when Bligh roused Elphinstone, and again lay down to sleep. The wind was at east, and though the moonlight paled the stars, I could see the Southern Cross on our larboard beam.

I had said nothing to the others of my fears, but for a day or two past I had had reason to suspect that Elphinstone’s mind was giving way under the strain. He was as little wasted in body as any man in the launch, yet his vacant eye, his lack of interest in what went on about him, and his strange gestures and mutterings were symptoms of a failing mind, although there was no reason to think him unequal to his duties. When Bligh took him by the shoulder to waken him, he said “Aye, sir!” in a dull voice, and took the tiller mechanically.