WTWHTAS
Chapt 11, part 8

In the morning - our 19th day adrift - it rained. It was not much of a rain and we couldn't store any water. We all got a good sluicing down, however, and we slaked our thirst.

And the rain served yet another purpose. DeAngelis and Bartek, it developed, had been driven to drinking salt water during their delirious sufferings in the doldrums, just as Alex Kaczmarczyk had done shortly before he died. Both now got enough fresh water to flush out the salt.

I am getting just a little ahead of my story here. The sight of the plane, coupled with the rising wind on the 18th night, made sleep an impossibility. I felt that the plane and the wind were signs from God that rescue was not far away.

So it was that I now reviewed mentally the things that God had done for me since that day so long ago when our gallant Flying Fortress disappeared beneath the waves. I thought of the answers I had received to prayer. But most of all I thought of the more important thing - that I had learned to pray. And that I had found my God and had not turned away from Him a stranger.