was a sand-beach; and here, after
throwing off my coat and waistcoat, I went down to have a closer touch
with my treacherous friend. The surf sprang at me, and the waves,
retreating gently, beckoned me to further ventures, which I made with a
knowledge of my ground, but with a love of this sweet danger also. A
strong breaker lifted me from my footing, but I outwitted it and
pursued it in retreat; there came another afterwards, and it was armed,
for, towering above me, it came down upon me with a bludgeon, which
fell heavily upon me. I seized it, but there my command upon my powers
ceased; and the wave, returning, bore me out. A blindness, a vague
sense of suffocation, an uncertain effort of instinct to regain my hold
upon the ground, a flight through the air, a soft fall upon the
sand--it was thus that I was saved; and I still held in my hand the
weapon with which my old friend had dealt me the blow.

It was a bottle. Afterwards, in my room at Monterey, I broke it and
found within it a writing of uncommon interest. After weeks of study
and deciphering (for age and imperfect execution made the task serious
and the result uncertain), I put together such fragments of it as had
the semblance of coherence; and I found that the sea in its travail had
yielded up one of its strangest mysteries. No hope of a profitable
answer to this earnest cry for help prompts its publication; it is
brought forth rather to show a novel and fearful form of human
suffering, and also to give knowledge possibly to some who, if they be
yet alive, would rather know the worst than nothing. The following is
what my labor has accomplished:

I am Amasa D. Keating, an unhappy wretch, who, with many others, am
suffering an extraordinary kind of torture; and so great is the mental
disturbance which I suffer, that I fear I shall not be able to make an
intelligent report. I am but just from a scene of inconceivable
terrors, and, although I am a man of some education and usually equal
to the task of intelligent expression, I am now in a condition of
violent mental disturbance, and of great physical suffering as well,
which I fear will prove a hindrance to the understanding of him who may
find this report. At the outset, I most earnestly beg such one to use
the swiftest diligence in publishing the matter of this writing, to the
end that haply an expedition for our relief may be outfitted without
delay; for, if the present state of affairs continue much longer