I stood upright, knowing myself saved, and thanking God, and staggering as I stood.  Already the boat was pounded to a thousand fragments.  And though I saw them not, I could guess how grievously had been pounded the bodies of Captain Nicholl and Arnold Bentham.  I saw an oar on the edge of the foam, and at certain risk I drew it clear.  Then I fell to my knees, knowing myself fainting.  And yet, ere I fainted, with a sailor’s instinct I dragged my body on and up among the cruel hurting rocks to faint finally beyond the reach of the sea.

I was near a dead man myself, that night, mostly in stupor, only dimly aware at times of the extremity of cold and wet that I endured.  Morning brought me astonishment and terror.  No plant, not a blade of grass, grew on that wretched projection of rock from the ocean’s bottom.  A quarter of a mile in width and a half mile in length, it was no more than a heap of rocks.  Naught could I discover to gratify the cravings of exhausted nature.  I was consumed with thirst, yet was there no fresh water.  In vain I tasted to my mouth’s undoing every cavity and depression in the rocks.  The spray of the gale so completely had enveloped every portion of the island that every depression was filled with water salt as the sea.

Of the boat remained nothing—­not even a splinter to show that a boat had been.  I stood possessed of my garments, a stout knife, and the one oar I had saved.  The gale had abated, and all that day, staggering and falling, crawling till hands and knees bled, I vainly sought water.

That night, nearer death than ever, I sheltered behind a rock from the wind.  A heavy shower of rain made me miserable.  I removed my various coats and spread them to soak up the rain; but, when I came to wring the moisture from them into my mouth, I was disappointed, because the cloth had been thoroughly impregnated with the salt of the ocean in which I had been immersed.  I lay on my back, my mouth open to catch the few rain-drops that fell directly into it.  It was tantalizing, but it kept my membranes moist and me from madness.

The second day I was a very sick man.  I, who had not eaten for so long, began to swell to a monstrous fatness—­my legs, my arms, my whole body.  With the slightest of pressures my fingers would sink in a full inch into my skin, and the depressions so made were long in going away.  Yet did I labour sore in order to fulfil God’s will that I should live.  Carefully, with my hands, I cleaned out the salt water from every slight hole, in the hope that succeeding showers of rain might fill them with water that I could drink.

My sad lot and the memories of the loved ones at Elkton threw me into a melancholy, so that I often lost my recollection for hours at a time.  This was a mercy, for it veiled me from my sufferings that else would have killed me.

In the night I was roused by the beat of rain, and I crawled from hole to hole, lapping up the rain or licking it from the rocks.  Brackish it was, but drinkable.  It was what saved me, for, toward morning, I awoke to find myself in a profuse perspiration and quite free of all delirium.