was no one on board. Had I known that the _Sparhawk_ was already
entered upon the list of derelicts, I should have been hopeless indeed.

At first I hung out a lantern as a night signal, but on the second
night it was broken by the wind, and I could find only one other in
good condition. The ship's lights must have been blown away in the
storm, together with her boats and much of her rigging. I would not
hang out the only lantern left me, for fear it should come to grief,
and that I should be left in the dark at night in that great vessel.
Had I known that I was on a vessel which had been regularly relegated
to the ranks of the forsaken, I should better have appreciated the
importance of allowing passing vessels to see that there was a light on
board the _Sparhawk_, and, therefore, in all probability a life.

As day after day had passed, I had become more and more disheartened.
It seemed to me that I was in a part of the great ocean avoided by
vessels of every kind, that I was not in the track of anything going
anywhere. Every day there seemed to be less and less wind, and when I
had been on board a week, the _Sparhawk_ was gently rising and falling
on a smooth sea in a dead calm. Hour after hour I swept the horizon
with the captain's glass, but only once did I see anything to encourage
me. This was what appeared like a long line of black smoke against the
distant sky, which might have been left by a passing steamer; but,
were this the case, I never saw the steamer.

Happily, there were plenty of provisions on board of a plain kind. I
found spirits and wine, and even medicines, and in the captain's room
there were pipes, tobacco, and some books.

This comparative comfort gave me a new and strange kind of despair. I
began to fear that I might become contented to live out my life alone
in the midst of this lonely ocean. In that case, what sort of a man
should I become?

It was about 8.30 by the captain's chronometer, when I came on deck on
the morning of the 25th of May. I had become a late riser, for what was
the good of rising early when there was nothing to rise for? I had
scarcely raised my eyes above the rail of the ship when, to my utter
amazement, I perceived a vessel not a mile away. The sight was so
unexpected, and the surprise was so great, that my heart almost stopped
beating as I stood and gazed at her.

She was a medium-sized iron steamer, and lay upon the sea in a peculiar
fashion, her head being mu