Word: hardtack
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...dive. Blindfolded, they were marched toward the torpedo room, where German seamen sponged off the oil coating the rescued men. They were given tea and black bread, questioned by the commander in perfect English. Two hours later the submarine surfaced, put the two seamen aboard a raft with water, hardtack and instructions to head south...
...rolled him overboard like a sack. He came to on a pitching raft where ship's Engineers Mahlon Benton and Lindgren Bancroft had dragged him. They rigged a sail of two big yellow quarantine flags, dressed Wajda's wounds, doled him out a supply of chocolate and hardtack...
...days dragged by, monotonous and deadly, rain came and brought drinking water-and raised mold on the hardtack. Benton wove a net of twine. The three men trolled with it, caught fish, which they ate raw. The fish guts they threw into the water lured hungry sharks which, Wajda said, "slapped the raft with their tails and we were afraid it would overturn." Benton began to grow weak. "On the 24th day he died and we put him overboard, mumbling what prayers we could remember. . . . Then Bancroft started to go out of his mind. ... He tried to jump. . . . I grabbed...
When it came, one of the sailors had already drifted away. The others righted the boat and bailed it out, found that they had eleven cans of condensed milk, some hardtack and chocolate, a compass and a small dictionary with a map of the Western Hemisphere. In good spirits, they headed west, helped along by an improvised sail made out of a lifeboat cover. On the fourth or fifth day, they sighted a tanker, but the quartermaster, who was senior man in the boat, was afraid to release a flare for fear of attracting a sub. He blinked...
After that it was all bad. Somebody stole the milk and drank it all. They prayed for rain. Without water, they were afraid to eat the hardtack and chocolate. They ate seaweed and some of them drank sea water. Once they came within a few yards of a coral island, but the coral was so sharp that they could not wade ashore. Hunger, thirst and the Caribbean sun began to madden and kill them...