文档介绍：Unit 12
“Take Over, Bos’n!”
Oscar Schisgall
1 Hour after hour I kept the gun pointed at the other nine men. From the lifeboat’s stern, where I’d sat most of the twenty days of our drifting, I could keep them all covered. If I had to shoot at such close quarters, I wouldn’t miss. They realized that. Nobody jumped at me. But in the way they all glared I could see how they’e to hate my guts.
2 Especially Barrett, who’d been bos’n’s mate; Barrett said in his harsh, cracked voice, “You’re a fool, Snyder. Y-you can’t hold out forever! You’re half asleep now!”
3 I didn’t answer. He was right. How long can a man stay awake? I hadn’t dared to shut my eyes in maybe seventy-two hours. Very soon now I’d doze off, and the instant that happened they’d jump on the little water that was left.
4 The last canteen lay under my legs. There wasn’t much in it after twenty days. Maybe a pint. Enough to give each of them a few drops. Yet I could see in their bloodshot eyes that they’d gladly kill me for those few drops. As a man I didn’t count any more. I was no longer third officer4 of the wrecked Montala. I was just a gun that kept them away from the water they craved. And with their tongue swollen and their cheeks sunken, they were half crazy.
5 The way I judged it, we must be some two hundred miles east of Ascension. Now that the storms were over, the Atlantic swells were long and easy, an