paddle
quickly caused them to blister, and although I paused long enough in my
labours to enable me to trim those sharp edges away with my knife, and
to work the board into somewhat more convenient shape, the blistering
process continued until within about an hour my palms were quite raw,
and smarting most atrociously from the salt in the water. Moreover, I
had lost my hat, and the sun struck down so fiercely upon my unprotected
head that I was soon nearly delirious with headache and the throbbing of
my old wound, received in the attack upon the pirate brigantine on the
Costa Firme. Still, headache or no headache, blisters or no blisters,
there was the land, yet a long distance off, and it had to be reached
before my strength gave out, or my life would pay the forfeit; so I set
my teeth and paddled doggedly on, hour after hour, my hunger ever
growing keener, while now I began to experience in addition the torments
of thirst, my whole body became racked with aches and pains as though I
had been unmercifully bruised and beaten, my head throbbed until it
seemed as if it would burst open, and, as for my hands, they at length
felt as though the rough paddle were white-hot iron; I had certainly
never in all my life before experienced such a complication of agonising
pains. And, despite it all, the land seemed to draw never an inch
nearer.

I think I must at length have become light-headed, for gradually a
feeling stole over me that everything--my surroundings, my situation,
and my suffering--was unreal; that I was the victim of a peculiarly
ghastly and horrible nightmare; and that I should by and by be wakened
fortunately to find that I was in my own bunk, and that the events of
the past twenty-four hours had been nothing more than an exceptionally
vivid and realistic dream. From this state I was partially aroused by
seeing a number of glittering objects start out of the sea all round me,
while at the same instant I was conscious of receiving a sharp blow on
the chest, when, on looking down into my lap, I saw a fine flying-fish
wriggling and flapping there, making a gallant but ineffectual effort to
hoist himself out of the hollow formed by my crossed legs, and return to
the water. For a second or two I stared stupidly down at the struggling
creature, and then it seemed to dawn upon my dazed faculties that here
at last was food, something that would at least mitigate for a time the
fierce pangs of my gnawing hunger, and