severely than I should have done at a higher level. I went
on, until I believed that I was close to the butt, then waiting for
another lurch. Directly it had taken place, I drew myself carefully up,
and searched about for the spile. I found it, and drew it out, and let
the water spout out into my mouth. How I enjoyed the draught. It
restored my strength and sadly flagging spirits. I stopped to breathe,
and then again applied my mouth to the hole. I should have been wiser
had I refrained, for before I could drive in the spile I was hove right
away to the opposite side of the hold, almost into the opening of the
water-butt which had burst. I could hear the water rushing out, and it
was some time before I could recover myself sufficiently to crawl back
to try and stop it. I was almost wet through before I could accomplish
this, though I had to mourn the loss of no small quantity of the
precious fluid. My purpose accomplished, I made my way back to my
couch. Hours passed by. Sometimes I would fancy that the storm was
never to end. In my disordered imagination, I pictured to myself the
ship, officers, and crew under some dreadful doom, destined to be tossed
about on the wide Atlantic for months and years, then perhaps to be
dismasted and lie floating motionless in the middle of the Sargasso Sea,
of which I had read, where the weeds collect, driven by the current
thrown off by the gulf-stream, till they attain sufficient thickness for
aquatic birds to walk over them.

I remembered the description that Mr Butterfield had given me of the
captain of the "Emu." I thought, perhaps, that he had committed some
dreadful crime, and was being thus punished for it. The only one of the
crew whom I remembered, Gregory Growles, was certainly a bad specimen of
humanity. Perhaps, though pretending to be honest traders, they were
pirates; and even when I had obtained my liberty they would not scruple
to make me walk the plank, should my presence be inconvenient. I
cannot, however, describe the hundred-and-one gloomy ideas which I
conjured up. How far they were from the truth time only was to show.
The ship continued her eccentric proceedings with more or less violence.
The tempest roared above my head. Crashing sounds still rose from the
cargo which had shifted, and which it appeared to me must ere long be
smashed to atoms. The worst of the matter was, that I had no one to
blame but myself. Had I been seized and shut up in