t my wits.

I had no means of making a light; but I don't believe that in any case
I should have attempted to kindle a flame, so great would have been my
terror of setting the ship on fire. I kept my eyes shut, fancying that
that would be a good way to accustom my vision to the blackness. And
here I very inopportunely recollected that one of the most dreadful
prison punishments inflicted upon mutinous and ill-behaved felons is
the locking of them up in a black room, where it is thought proper not
to keep them very long lest they should go mad; and I wondered how many
days or hours it would take to make a lunatic of me in this lazarette,
that was as black certainly as any black room ever built for refractory
criminals.

I had no clothes save those I wore. Stowaways as a rule do not carry
much luggage to sea with them. I had heard tell of ships' slop-chests,
however, and guessed, when I was enlarged and put to work, the captain
would let me choose a suit of clothes and pay for them out of my wages.
I did not then know that it is not customary for commanders of ships to
pay stowaways for their services. Indeed, I afterwards got to hear
that far better men than the average run of stowaway were, in their
anxiety to get abroad, very willing to sign articles for a shilling a
month, and lead the lives of dogs for that wage.

I had come into the ship with a parcel of bread and cheese in my
pocket: feeling hungry I partook of this modest refreshment, and
clawing round touched a bottle, pulled the loosely-fitted cork out, and
drank. This small repast heartened me, I grew a little less afraid of
the profound blackness, and of the blue and green lights which came and
went upon it, and began to hope I should not go mad.

The hours sneaked along. Now and again a sort of creaking noise ran
through the interior, which made me suppose that the ship was
proceeding down the river in tow of a tug. Occasionally I heard the
tread of passengers overhead. It pleased me to hear that sound. It
soothed me by diminishing the intolerable sense of loneliness bred by
the midnight blackness in which I lay. The atmosphere was warm, but I
drew breath without difficulty. The general smell was, indeed, a
complicated thing; in fact, the lazarette was a storeroom. I seemed to
taste ham, tobacco, cheese, and fifty other such matters in the air.

I had slept very ill on the preceding night, and after I had been for
some hours in the lazarette