of the western horizon, while the wind had dwindled away
until it had become the faintest zephyr, scarcely to be distinguished
save by the slight ruffling of the water here and there where it
touched, it being so nearly a flat calm that already great oily-looking
patches of gleaming smoothness had appeared and were spreading
momentarily through the faint blue ripplings that still betrayed a
movement in the air. As for me, I was utterly exhausted with my long
day's toil under the roasting sun; every bone in my body was aching; I
was in a burning fever, and was sick with the smart of my raw and
bleeding hands. The old feeling of callousness and indifference to my
fate was once more upon me, and as I gazed at the crazy-looking raft
which I had constructed with such a lavish expenditure of painful toil,
I smiled in grim irony of myself that I should have done so much to
preserve that life which now seemed of such little worth, and which
promised soon to become an unendurable burden to me. A reaction from
the excitement that had sustained me during my labours had set in, and I
am persuaded that had any further exertion been necessary for the
preservation of my life I should not have undertaken it.

Meanwhile the felucca had sunk nearly to her covering-board, and might
be expected to founder at any moment. I climbed laboriously upon the
top of the closed skylight and took a last, long look round to ascertain
whether anything had drifted into my range of view while I had been
engaged upon the raft, but there was nothing; the horizon was bare
throughout its entire circumference; so I climbed down again, and,
staggering to the raft, flung myself down upon it, with my bundle of
provision as a pillow, and patiently awaited the evanishment of the
felucca.

Poor little craft! what a forlorn, weather-beaten, sea-washed wreck she
looked, as she lay there wallowing wearily and--as it seemed to me--
painfully upon the long, creeping, glassy undulations of the swell! How
different from the trim, sturdy little hooker that had sailed seaward so
confidently and saucily out of Kingston harbour a few years--no, not
_years_, it must be months, or--was it only _days_--a few _days_ ago?
It seemed more like years than days to me, and yet--why, of course it
_could_ only be days. Heaven, how my head ached! how my brain seemed to
throb and boil within my skull! and surely it was not blood--it must be
fire that was coursing through my veins an