ON FEBRUARY 6, the four men on Pollard’s boat, having consumed “the last morsel” of Samuel Reed, began to “[look] at each other with horrid thoughts in our minds,” according to one survivor, “but we held our tongues.” Then the youngest of them, sixteen-year-old Charles Ramsdell, uttered the unspeakable. They should cast lots, he said, to see who would be killed so that the rest could live.
