a way, and he
asserted that a passion of vain weeping and delirium, during which he
kicked himself warm, was followed by a noble and godlike calm, during
which, lying as easily upon the sea as on a couch, and inspired by the
thought that some ear might catch the notes and die the happier for it,
he lifted his divine voice and sang a swan song. After that he sang
twenty-nine others. And then, in the very midst of _La Bella Napoli_,
with which he intended to close (fearing to strain his voice if he sang
any more), he thought of sharks.

Spurred by that thought, he claims to have kicked and beaten with his
hands until he was insensible. Otherwise, he would, he said, have
continued to float about placidly, singing swan songs at intervals
until, at last, thinned by starvation to the sinking point, he would
have floated no more.

To shorten up. Signor You-know-what, either owing to his struggles, or
to the sea breeze pressing against his stomach, came ashore on Prana
Beach; was pounced upon by the niggers, stripped of his glad rags (the
topper had been lost in the shuffle), and dropped into a hole eight feet
deep, for safe-keeping. It was in this hole, buried in sand, that he
found the flask I have told you about. Well, one day, for he had a bit
of talent that way, he fell to sketching on his legs, knees, upper thigh
and left forearm, using for ink something black that they had given him
for breakfast. That night it rained; but next morning his drawings were
as black and sharp as when he had made them; this, coupled with the
flask, furnished him with an idea, a very forlorn and hopeless one, but
an idea for all that. He had, however, nothing to write his C Q D on but
himself, none of which (for he held himself in trust for his Maker as a
complete whole, he explained) he intended to part with.

It was in trying to climb out of the hole that he tore a flap of skin
from his left thigh just above the knee, clean off, except for one
thread by which it hung. In less than two days he had screwed up his
courage to breaking that thread with a sudden jerk. He cured his bit of
hide in a novel way. Every morning he cried on it, and when the tears
had dried, leaving their minute residue of salt, he would work the raw
skin with his thumb and a bit of stick he had found. Then a nigger boy,
one beast of a hot day, lowered him a gourd of sea-water as a joke, and
Signor What-we-agreed-on, made salt of that while the sun shone, and
finished