dcloth over me, to keep me from
getting chilled while asleep.

For the first week after leaving port, I had found it very cold, for it
was the winter season when we left home. The cloth, however, after it
was discovered, enabled me to wrap up snugly enough, and I no longer
cared for the cold. After a time, however, I began to perceive that the
cold had quite taken its departure, and each day and night the
atmosphere in the hold of the ship appeared to be growing warmer. On
the night after the storm had passed, it did not feel at all cold, and
the slightest covering sufficed.

At first, I was surprised by this sudden change in the state of the
atmosphere; but when I reflected a little, I was able to explain it to
my satisfaction. "Beyond a doubt," thought I, "we have been all the
while sailing southward, and we are getting into the hot latitudes of
the torrid zone."

I knew but little of what that meant, but I had heard that the torrid
zone--or the tropics, as it was also called--lay to the south of
England; and that there the climate was hotter than the hottest summer
day at home. I had also heard that Peru was a southern country, and
therefore we must be going in a southerly direction to reach it.

This was a very good explanation of the warm weather that had set in.
The ship had now been sailing for nearly two weeks; and allowing her to
have made two hundred miles a day (and ships, I knew, often go faster
than that), she would at this time be a long way from England, and in a
different climate altogether.

Thus reasoning with myself, I contrived to pass that afternoon and
evening, and as I felt the hands of my watch indicating the hour of ten,
I resolved, as already stated, to eat the half biscuit, and then go to
sleep.

I first drew a cup of water, so that the biscuit might not be eaten dry;
and, this done, I stretched forth my hand for the bread. I knew the
exact spot where it lay, for I had a little corner, just alongside the
great beam, where I kept my knife and cup, and wooden almanack--a sort
of little shelf, raised by a roll of the cloth above the common level of
my cell. There I had placed the half biscuit, and there, of course, I
could lay my hand upon it as well without a light as with one. So
perfectly had I become acquainted with every corner of my apartment, and
every crevice leading from it, that I could place my finger on any given
spot of the size of a crown-piece, without the slightest