ng one of those I had saved from the previous
day, with a biscuit, for breakfast. I was already very thirsty, having
had nothing to drink since I had left the boat, and would have welcomed
a heavy shower from the dark clouds overhead. I continued to walk, or
rather to climb about the rock, as there was but a very small level
place on which I could walk.

Then I sat down again, and with melancholy gaze watched the foaming
seas, which I began to dread, as I saw them more and more frequently
covering the rock, would prove my grave. At length I had to seek a
higher and more exposed level, and as water occasionally surged up to
the place where I had spent the night, and might at any moment sweep me
off, I tried to nerve myself up to my fate.

With difficulty I could restrain myself from drinking the sea-water. I
was well aware of the danger of doing so, and resisted the temptation.
At last, as I was looking up, I felt a drop fall on my face. It was not
the spray of the sea. Another and another followed, and down came a
copious shower. I opened my mouth, at the same time holding out my cap
to the rain, hoping to get a little in it. I got but little, so I
placed it on the rock and spread it open. I then took off my jacket,
and held it out that it might be well wetted.

I hoped also to find some hollow in the rock that might be rilled with
fresh water. The rain came down, as it does in the tropics, in a
perfect deluge. My jacket was wet through in a minute, and I was able
to wring out of it a sufficient amount of fresh water to quench my
burning thirst. After this I was able to eat some biscuits. It should
be remembered that the tide reaches its height nearly three-quarters of
an hour later every day. I watched with intense anxiety its rising this
afternoon. Now it entirely covered the rocks where I had landed, then
those over which I had made my way were concealed from view, and now it
reached the base of the beacon-rock itself, against which the seas began
to break with a fury surpassing that of the previous day.

The spot on which I had been standing one minute was the next covered by
the seething waters, when I retired to a higher level. Again and again
a wave broke over the rock, and striking one of the almost perpendicular
sides flew high into the air above my head. Every moment my hope of
escape was becoming less and less. I cried to heaven for mercy. As I
saw death drawing near, the desire to live