en, which I split
and cured in the sun after the manner of cod. This welcome change of
diet was not without its consequence. I was guilty of gluttony, and for
all of the succeeding night I was near to death's door.

In the seventh year of my stay on the island, in the very same month of
March, occurred a similar storm of great violence. Following upon it, to
my astonishment, I found an enormous dead whale, quite fresh, which had
been cast up high and dry by the waves. Conceive my gratification when
in the bowels of the great fish I found deeply imbedded a harpoon of the
common sort with a few fathoms of new line attached thereto.

Thus were my hopes again revived that I should finally meet with an
opportunity to quit the desolate island. Beyond doubt these seas were
frequented by whalemen, and, so long as I kept up a stout heart, sooner
or later I should be saved. For seven years I had lived on seal meat, so
that at sight of the enormous plentitude of different and succulent food
I fell a victim to my weakness and ate of such quantities that once again
I was well nigh to dying. And yet, after all, this, and the affair of
the small fish, were mere indispositions due to the foreignness of the
food to my stomach, which had learned to prosper on seal meat and on
nothing but seal meat.

Of that one whale I preserved a full year's supply of provision. Also,
under the sun's rays, in the rock hollows, I tried out much of the oil,
which, with the addition of salt, was a welcome thing in which to dip my
strips of seal-meat whilst dining. Out of my precious rags of shirts I
could even have contrived a wick, so that, with the harpoon for steel and
rock for flint, I might have had a light at night. But it was a vain
thing, and I speedily forwent the thought of it. I had no need for light
when God's darkness descended, for I had schooled myself to sleep from
sundown to sunrise, winter and summer.

I, Darrell Standing, cannot refrain from breaking in on this recital of
an earlier existence in order to note a conclusion of my own. Since
human personality is a growth, a sum of all previous existences added
together, what possibility was there for Warden Atherton to break down my
spirit in the inquisition of solitary? I am life that survived, a
structure builded up through the ages of the past--and such a past! What
were ten days and nights in the jacket to me?--to me, who had once been
Daniel Foss, and for eight years l