rt of taking my
life, I was convinced; and very soon I began to feel that I did not care
how soon he sated his vengeance; for confined below in the heat and
darkness of the stifling hold, with no resting-place but the hard
shingle for my aching body, breathing an atmosphere poisonous with the
odour of bilge-water, with only three flinty ship-biscuits, alive with
weevils, and a half-pint of putrid water per day upon which to sustain
life, and beset by ferocious rats who disputed with me the possession of
my scanty fare, I soon became so miserably ill that death quickly lost
all its terrors, and I felt that I could welcome it as a release from my
sufferings.

How long I remained in this state of wretchedness I cannot tell, for I
soon lost count of time and indeed at last sank into a state of semi-
delirium; but I think from subsequent calculations it must have been
about ten or twelve days after the date of my incarceration that I was
aroused once more to a complete consciousness of my surroundings by
observing that a change had occurred in the motion of the ship. She no
longer pitched and rolled as does a vessel in the open sea, but slid
along--as I could tell by the gurgling sound of the water along her
bends--upon a perfectly even keel except for the slight list or
inclination due to the pressure of the wind upon her sails. I
conjectured that she must have arrived at the end of her voyage and
entered the Kwara river, a conjecture that was shortly afterward
confirmed by the sounds on deck of shouted orders and the bustle and
confusion attendant upon the operation of shortening sail, soon followed
by the splash of an anchor from the bows and the rumble of the stout
hempen cable through the hawse-pipe. Then ensued a period of quiet of
several hours' duration, broken at length by the appearance of the
carpenter and another seaman who, having removed my irons, gruffly
ordered me to follow them up on deck.

I felt altogether too wretchedly ill, and too utterly indifferent
respecting my fate, to ask these men any questions, but contrived, by
almost superhuman exertion, to climb up the perpendicular ladder which
led to the deck; and when I presently emerged from the foetid atmosphere
of the hold into the free air and dazzling sunshine of what proved to be
early morning, I was so overcome by the sudden transition that I swooned
away.

I must have remained in a state of complete unconsciousness for several
hours, for when