. I felt that I was altogether out of the beaten
track of ships because of the reefs that studded these seas, and
therefore the prospect of my being rescued was very remote indeed--a
thought that often caused me a kind of dull agony, more terrible than any
mere physical pain.

However, I fixed up a flagstaff on the highest point of the island--(poor
"island,"--_that_ was not many inches)--and floated an ensign _upside
down_ from it, in the hope that this signal of distress might be sighted
by some stray vessel, and indicate the presence of a castaway to those on
board. Every morning I made my way to the flagstaff, and scanned the
horizon for a possible sail, but I always had to come away disappointed.
This became a habit; yet, so eternal is hope, that day by day, week by
week, and month by month the bitter disappointment was always a keen
torture. By the way, the very reefs that made those seas so dangerous
served completely to protect my little island in stormy weather. The
fury of the billows lost itself upon them, so that even the surf very
rarely reached me. I was usually astir about sunrise. I knew that the
sun rose about 6 A.M. in those tropical seas and set at 6 P.M.; there was
very little variation all the year round. A heavy dew descended at
night, which made the air delightfully cool; but in the day it was so
frightfully hot that I could not bear the weight of ordinary clothes upon
my person, so I took to wearing a silk shawl instead, hung loosely round
my waist.

Another reason why I abandoned clothes was because I found that when a
rent appeared the sun blazed down through it and raised a painful
blister. On the other hand, by merely wearing a waist-cloth, and taking
constant sea baths, I suffered scarcely at all from the scorching
tropical sun. I now devoted all my energies to the wreck of the
_Veielland_, lest anything should happen to it, and worked with feverish
energy to get everything I possibly could out of the ship. It took me
some months to accomplish this, but eventually I had removed
everything--even the greater part of the cargo of pearl shells. The work
was rendered particularly arduous in consequence of the decks being so
frequently under water; and I found it was only at the full and new moons
that I could actually _walk_ round on the rocks to the wreck. In course
of time the ship began to break up, and I materially assisted the
operation with an axe. I wanted her timbers to buil