sity and suffering purged, a
new and a right gallant, manly boy--how manly I did not know until some
time afterward, when it came out that, watching me and observing that I
took a trifle less food and water than I served out to others, he had
surreptitiously returned a portion of his own meagre allowance. Poor
boy! so far as usefulness was concerned, he was already as good as dead,
for he could do nothing but just lie where he had flung himself down,
utterly exhausted, and moan piteously.

Being naturally robust, I still retained a small modicum of strength.
This I utilised by hauling in the sea anchor, and, with superhuman
exertion, setting it up in place again, not so much with any hope that
it would blow us to land, as that it might attract attention aboard some
passing ship and lead them to bear down upon and rescue us. This last
bit of exertion finished me off, too, and I had not enough strength left
even to stagger aft to the cockpit; I simply collapsed on the deck and
knew no more.

I must have lain thus all through the night, for when at length
consciousness returned it was broad day, with the sun about an hour high
in a sky of exquisite stainless blue. The long hours of unconsciousness
or sleep--perhaps it partook of both--had somewhat restored me, and I
sat up, staring about me.

Merciful heaven! were my eyes deceiving me? Had I gone crazy, or was
what I beheld real? I stared and stared with eyes that seemed to be
starting out of my head, but the vision--if vision it was--remained
stable. There lay a fair island, with trees that seemed to wave gently
in the brisk morning breeze, and a hill that might almost be termed a
mountain nearly in its centre. That island was dead to leeward of us,
and all that we had to do was to run down to it and land upon it, if God
would only be merciful enough to allow the fair breeze to last.

With a queer kind of croaking shriek, the memory of which disturbs my
sleep even now occasionally, but which I intended to be a yell of
rejoicing, I staggered to my feet, stumbled aft to the cockpit, and half
leaped, half tumbled into it. I shipped the rowlock in the after cleat,
got out the steering oar, and, with labour that made me groan and pant,
contrived to head the boat toward that glorious vision of an island, for
we had been drifting toward it broadside on. Then I bent down to where
the lad Julius lay unconscious at my feet, and, shaking him roughly by
the shoulder, cal