s living, and that, if his
past were any precedent, my hours of life would be few.

I cannot tell you why it was, but, strange to say, this reflection did
not give me very great alarm at the moment. Perhaps I suffered too much
from bodily weakness, and would have welcomed any release, even death;
perhaps I was buoyed up with that eternal hope which bears its most
generous blossom in the springtime of life. In either case, I put away
the thought of danger, and set to the task of conning my position a
little more closely. The boat in which I lay was painted white, and was
of elegant build. She had all the fine lines of a yacht's jolly-boat;
and when I raised my head I could see that her fittings had been put in
only at great expense. She was not a large boat, but the centre seat
had been removed from her to let me lie on a tarpaulin which covered
her keel, and the stern seat had been used to bind my feet. A second
tarpaulin, folded twice, had been propped under my head, but my left
hand was bound close to the boat thwart, and there was a rope doubled
round my right forearm so that I could not raise myself an inch, though
my right hand was free. The meaning of this apparent neglect I soon
learnt. There was a flask on the edge of the tarpaulin which supported
my head, and by it half a dozen rather fine captain's biscuits. I had a
prodigious thirst on me, and I drank from the flask; but found it to
contain weak brandy, and would willingly have exchanged thrice its
contents for a long draught of pure water. But the biscuits I could not
touch; and I began to be chilled with the rain which fell copiously,
and with the sea which sent spray in fountains upon my body.

Up to this time, I had heard no sound of human voices, but the silence
was broken at last by a shout, and the boat ceased to move.

"All hands, make sail!" cried someone, apparently above me; and after
that I heard the "yo-heave" of the men hauling, as I judged, at a
main-sail. The second order, "Sheets home!" proved to me that I was
behind a sailing ship, perhaps a yacht which these men had secured, as
they got _La France_--and burnt her. I shuddered at the second thought,
and my head began to burn again despite the wet. Did they mean to leave
me there until the end of it, when the cold and my wound should do
their work? Had they forgotten me? Had they any reason for keeping me
alive? My questions were in part answered by a sudden shout from the
deck of the ship.