lt
lassitude both of mind and body, approaching to prostration.

Some of them slept. Some of them could have slept within the portals of
Pluto, with the dog Cerberus yelping in their ears!

A few there were who seemed either unable to take rest or indifferent to
it. All night long some one or other--sometimes two at a time--might be
seen staggering about the raft, or crawling over its planks, as if
unconscious of what they were doing. It seemed a wonder that some of
them--semi-somnambulists in a double sense--did not fall overboard into
the water. But they did not. Notwithstanding the eccentricity of their
movements, they all succeeded in maintaining their position on the raft.
To tumble over the edge would have been tantamount to toppling into the
jaws of an expectant shark, and getting "scrunched" between no less than
six rows of sharp teeth. Perhaps it was an instinct--or some
presentiment of this peril--that enabled these wakeful wanderers to
preserve their equilibrium.

CHAPTER SEVENTY SEVEN.

A WHISPERED CONSPIRACY.

Although most of the men had surrendered themselves to such slumber as
they might obtain, the silence was neither profound nor continuous. At
times no sounds were heard save the whisperings of the breeze, as it
brushed against the spread canvas, or a slight "swashing" in the water
as it was broken by the rough timbers of the craft.

These sounds were intermingled with the loud breathing of some of the
sleepers,--an occasional snore,--and now and then a muttered speech the
involuntary utterance of someone dreaming a dreadful dream.

At intervals other noises would arise, when one or more of the waking
castaways chanced to come together, to hold a short conversation; or
when one of them, scarce conscious of what he did, stumbled over the
limbs of a prostrate comrade,--perhaps awaking him from a pleasant
repose to the consciousness of the painful circumstances under which he
had been enjoying it.

Such occurrences usually led to angry altercations,--in which threats
and ribald language would for some minutes freely find vent from the
lips both of the disturbed and the disturber; and then both would
growlingly subside into silence.

At that hour, when the night was at its darkest, and the fog at its
thickest, two men might have been seen,--though only by an eye very
close to where they were,--in a sitting posture at the bottom of the
mast. They were crouching rather than seated; for