“I can understand their being thirsty,” he said, “but they couldn’t have got as thin as that just coming from Cabrera. They could have paddled that raft of theirs here in a couple of days, even without a wind.”

“When did you leave Cabrera?” asked Hornblower.

“Yesterday.”

Hornblower translated to Bush.

“That sunburn of theirs is months old,” said Bush. “The fellows can’t have worn a pair of breeches in weeks. There must be funny doings in Cabrera.”

“Tell me,” said Hornblower to the castaways, “how did you become—like this?”

It was a long story, the longer as it was interrupted while the castaways ate and drank, and while Hornblower translated the more sensational parts to Bush.

There were twentythousand of the poor devils—mainly the army which had surrendered at Baylen, but prisoners taken in a hundred other skirmishes as well—who had annoyed their Spanish captors inexpressibly while they were kept on the mainland by their continual attempts to escape. Finally the Spaniards had taken the whole twentythousand and dumped them down on the island of Cabrera, a mere rock of only a few square miles. That had been two years ago; there was no need for any Spanish garrison on the island itself—British sea power made it impossible for any French ship to attempt a rescue, and there was nothing with which to make boats except for rare driftwood. For two years these twentythousand miserable wretches had lived on the rock, scraping holes for shelter from the summer sun and winter storms.

“There are only two wells, monsieur,” said the blueeyed Frenchman, “and sometimes they run dry. But often it rains.”

Hornblower’s mathematical mind dealt with the timeproblem of supplying twentythousand men with water from two wells. Each man would be lucky if he got one drink a day, even if the wells never ran dry.

Of course there was no fuel on the island—not one of the twentythousand had seen a spark of fire for two years, and no clothing had survived two years of exposure and wear.