The Privateersman by Frederick Marryat — Read

Having eaten some venison, and drunk out of the calabash, the captain painted me black, with here and there a line of red and white on the face and shoulders. I performed the same duty towards him, and we then resumed our paddles, and pushed in a slanting direction for the shore. The tide now ran down against us, and we could hardly stem it, and finding ourselves opposite a beach clear of trees for a quarter of a mile, we agreed to run on shore to look for a large stone. We soon found one which answered our purpose, and, paddling off again to three or four hundred yards, we made the stone fast to the bow-rope of our boat, and anchored the canoe with it. Having succeeded in this, we got out the fishing-lines, and, with a piece of raw meat as a bait, we soon had several fish in the canoe; after which we put on no more baits, but pretended to fish till the tide slacked, when we lifted our anchor and recommenced our paddling to the northward.

At night we landed on a rock, close to the beach, having well reconnoitred before it was dark, to see if there were any canoes or Indians to be seen on the shore; and thus we continued for five days, during which we passed the mouths of one or two rivers, and had gained, as we supposed, more that 150 miles along the coast, but how much to the northward we could not tell, as we followed the windings of the shore. We were twice obliged to land to obtain water, but we always did so in the daytime, having taken the precaution to black the whole of our bodies and take off our trousers before we landed. Our deer's flesh was all gone, and we continued to live on fish, cooking as much as we could at one time. The collecting fire-wood was the great risk which we ran; for we were then obliged to land where there was wood. It was on the sixth day that we were first in danger. As we rounded a point, we fell in with another canoe with six or seven people in it.