moment longer than I could help, but mounted back
to the surface like a duck; and then, rising upon the wave, looked
around me. My object in so doing was to get sight of the signal-staff,
and with the spray driving in my eyes this was not so easy. Just like a
water-dog searching for some object in the water, I had to turn twice or
thrice before I saw it; for I was uncertain in which direction to look
for it, so completely had the sudden plunge blinded me and blunted my
senses.

I got my eyes upon it at length; not within reach, as might have been
expected; but many yards off, quite twenty, I should think! Wind and
tide had been busy with me; and had I left them to themselves for ten
minutes more, they would have carried me to a point from which I should
never have been able to swim back.

As soon as I espied the post I struck directly for it--not indeed that I
very clearly knew what I should do when I got there, but urged on with a
sort of instinct that something might interfere in my favour. I was
acting just as men act when in danger of being drowned. I was catching
at straws. I need not say that I was cool: you would not believe me,
nor would there be a word of truth in it, for I was far from cool in the
moral sense of the word, whatever I might be personally and physically.
On the contrary, I was frightened nearly out of my senses; and had just
enough left to direct me back to the post, though this might only have
been instinct. But no, something more than instinct; for I had at the
same time a keen and rational sense of the unpleasant fact, that when I
should arrive at the post, I might be not a bit nearer to _safety_. I
had no fear about being able to reach the staff. I had confidence
enough in my natatory powers to make me easy on that score. It was only
when I thought of the little help I should find there, that my
apprehensions were keen, and this I was thinking of all the while I was
in the water.

I could easily have climbed the staff as far as the cask, but no
farther. To get to the top was beyond my power; one of those
difficulties which even the fear of death cannot overcome. I had tried
it till I was tired of trying; in short, till I saw I could not do it.
Could I only have accomplished that feat, I might have done so before,
for I took it for granted that on that high perch I should have been
safe, and the nine-gallon barrel would have been large enough to have
given me a seat where I mig