e confused and
violent movements, shook and deafened me; and presently, to my other
pains and distresses, there was added the sickness of an unused landsman
on the sea. In that time of my adventurous youth I suffered many
hardships; but none that was so crushing to my mind and body, or lit by
so few hopes, as these first hours aboard the brig.

I heard a gun fire, and supposed the storm had proved too strong for us,
and we were firing signals of distress. The thought of deliverance, even
by death in the deep sea, was welcome to me. Yet it was no such matter;
but (as I was afterwards told) a common habit of the captain's, which I
here set down to show that even the worst man may have his kindlier
side. We were then passing, it appeared, within some miles of Dysart,
where the brig was built, and where old Mrs. Hoseason, the captain's
mother, had come some years before to live; and whether outward or
inward bound, the _Covenant_ was never suffered to go by that place by
day, without a gun fired and colours shown.

I had no measure of time; day and night were alike in that ill-smelling
cavern of the ship's bowels where I lay; and the misery of my situation
drew out the hours to double. How long, therefore, I lay waiting to hear
the ship split upon some rock, or to feel her reel head-foremost into
the depths of the sea, I have not the means of computation. But sleep at
length stole from me the consciousness of sorrow.

I was wakened by the light of a hand-lantern shining in my face. A small
man of about thirty, with green eyes and a tangle of fair hair, stood
looking down at me.

"Well," said he, "how goes it?"

I answered by a sob; and my visitor then felt my pulse and temples, and
set himself to wash and dress the wound upon my scalp.

"Ay," said he, "a sore dunt.[10] What, man? Cheer up! The world's no'
done; you've made a bad start of it, but you'll make a better. Have you
had any meat?"

I said I could not look at it: and thereupon he gave me some brandy and
water in a tin pannikin, and left me once more to myself.

The next time he came to see me, I was lying betwixt sleep and waking,
my eyes wide open in the darkness, the sickness quite departed, but
succeeded by a horrid giddiness and swimming that was almost worse to
bear. I ached, besides, in every limb, and the cords that bound me
seemed to be of fire. The smell of the hole in which I lay seemed to
have become a part of me; and during the long interval si