ble the tiger, who, having tasted blood, is not
satisfied till he has destroyed his victim. I dared not go to sleep.

And yet I could not always keep awake. Sleep would in time overpower
me, and I should have to yield to it in the end. The longer I struggled
against it, the deeper the sleep that would follow; and perhaps I might
fall into some profound slumber from which I might never awake--some
terrible "nightmare" that would bind me beyond the power of moving, and
thus render me an easy prey to the voracious monsters that surrounded
me!

For a short while I suffered these painful apprehensions, but soon an
idea came into my mind that gave me relief; and that was, to replace my
jacket in the crevice through which the rats had entered, and thus shut
them out altogether.

It was certainly a very simple way of getting over the difficulty; and,
no doubt, it would have occurred to me sooner--that is, when the first
and second rats had been troubling me--but then I thought there were but
the two, and I might settle with them in a different way. Now, however,
the case was different. To destroy all the rats that were in the hold
of that ship would be a serious undertaking, if not an impossibility,
and I no longer thought of such a thing. The best plan, therefore,
would be that which I had now hit upon: to stop up the main aperture,
and also every other through which a rat could possibly squeeze his
body, and thus be at once secured against either their intrusion or
their attacks.

Without further delay, I "plugged" up the crevice with my jacket; and,
wondering that I had not thought of this simple plan before, I laid me
down--this time with a full confidence that I might sleep undisturbed,
as long as I should feel the necessity or inclination.

CHAPTER FORTY ONE.

DREAM AND REALITY.

So wearied had I become with fears and long waking, that my cheek had
scarce touched my pillow, before I was off into the land of dreams. And
not the _land_ of dreams either, for it was the _sea_ of which I dreamt;
and, just as before, that I was at its bottom, and surrounded by horrid
crab-like monsters who threatened to eat me up.

Now and then, however, these crab-like creatures assumed the form of
rats; and then my dream more resembled reality. I dreamt that they were
in vast numbers around me, and menaced me from every side; that I had
only my jacket to keep them off, and that I was sweeping it from side to
side for tha