It was not because my body was enduring, but because my spirit was enduring.  And it was because, in earlier existences, my spirit had been wrought to steel-hardness by steel-hard experiences.  There was one experience that for long was a sort of nightmare to me.  It had neither beginning nor end.  Always I found myself on a rocky, surge-battered islet so low that in storms the salt spray swept over its highest point.  It rained much.  I lived in a lair and suffered greatly, for I was without fire and lived on uncooked meat.

Always I suffered.  It was the middle of some experience to which I could get no clue.  And since, when I went into the little death I had no power of directing my journeys, I often found myself reliving this particularly detestable experience.  My only happy moments were when the sun shone, at which times I basked on the rocks and thawed out the almost perpetual chill I suffered.

My one diversion was an oar and a jackknife.  Upon this oar I spent much time, carving minute letters and cutting a notch for each week that passed.  There were many notches.  I sharpened the knife on a flat piece of rock, and no barber was ever more careful of his favourite razor than was I of that knife.  Nor did ever a miser prize his treasure as did I prize the knife.  It was as precious as my life.  In truth, it was my life.

By many repetitions, I managed to bring back out of the jacket the legend that was carved on the oar.  At first I could bring but little.  Later, it grew easier, a matter of piecing portions together.  And at last I had the thing complete.  Here it is: 

This is to acquaint the person into whose hands this Oar may fall, that Daniel Foss, a native of Elkton, in Maryland, one of the United States of America, and who sailed from the port of Philadelphia, in 1809, on board the brig Negociator, bound to the Friendly Islands, was cast upon this desolate island the February following, where he erected a hut and lived a number of years, subsisting on seals—­he being the last who survived of the crew of said brig, which ran foul of an island of ice, and foundered on the 25th Nov. 1809.

There it was, quite clear.  By this means I learned a lot about myself.  One vexed point, however, I never did succeed in clearing up.  Was this island situated in the far South Pacific or the far South Atlantic?  I do not know enough of sailing-ship tracks to be certain whether the brig Negociator would sail for the Friendly Islands via Cape Horn or via the Cape of Good Hope.  To confess my own ignorance, not until after I was transferred to Folsom did I learn in which ocean were the Friendly Islands.  The Japanese murderer, whom I have mentioned before, had been a sailmaker on board the Arthur Sewall ships, and he told me that the probable sailing course would be by way of the Cape of Good Hope.  If this were so, then the dates of sailing from Philadelphia and of being wrecked would easily determine which ocean.  Unfortunately, the sailing date is merely 1809.  The wreck might as likely have occurred in one ocean as the other.