earned patience in that school of rocks
in the far South Ocean?

* * * * *

At the end of my eighth year on the island in the month of September,
when I had just sketched most ambitious plans to raise my pyramid to
sixty feet above the summit of the island, I awoke one morning to stare
out upon a ship with topsails aback and nearly within hail. That I might
be discovered, I swung my oar in the air, jumped from rock to rock, and
was guilty of all manner of livelinesses of action, until I could see the
officers on the quarter-deck looking at me through their spyglasses. They
answered by pointing to the extreme westerly end of the island, whither I
hastened and discovered their boat manned by half a dozen men. It seems,
as I was to learn afterward, the ship had been attracted by my pyramid
and had altered its course to make closer examination of so strange a
structure that was greater of height than the wild island on which it
stood.

But the surf proved to be too great to permit the boat to land on my
inhospitable shore. After divers unsuccessful attempts they signalled me
that they must return to the ship. Conceive my despair at thus being
unable to quit the desolate island. I seized my oar (which I had long
since determined to present to the Philadelphia Museum if ever I were
preserved) and with it plunged headlong into the foaming surf. Such was
my good fortune, and my strength and agility, that I gained the boat.

I cannot refrain from telling here a curious incident. The ship had by
this time drifted so far away, that we were all of an hour in getting
aboard. During this time I yielded to my propensities that had been
baffled for eight long years, and begged of the second mate, who steered,
a piece of tobacco to chew. This granted, the second mate also proffered
me his pipe, filled with prime Virginia leaf. Scarce had ten minutes
passed when I was taken violently sick. The reason for this was clear.
My system was entirely purged of tobacco, and what I now suffered was
tobacco poisoning such as afflicts any boy at the time of his first
smoke. Again I had reason to be grateful to God, and from that day to
the day of my death, I neither used nor desired the foul weed.

* * * * *

I, Darrell Standing, must now complete the amazingness of the details of
this existence which I relived while unconscious in the strait-jacket in
San Quentin prison. I often wondered if Daniel Foss had been true in his
reso