Then came the sun, the first time since my stay on the island, and I spread most of my garments to dry.  Of water I drank my careful fill, and I calculated there was ten days’ supply if carefully husbanded.  It was amazing how rich I felt with this vast wealth of brackish water.  And no great merchant, with all his ships returned from prosperous voyages, his warehouses filled to the rafters, his strong-boxes overflowing, could have felt as wealthy as did I when I discovered, cast up on the rocks, the body of a seal that had been dead for many days.  Nor did I fail, first, to thank God on my knees for this manifestation of His ever-unfailing kindness.  The thing was clear to me:  God had not intended I should die.  From the very first He had not so intended.

I knew the debilitated state of my stomach, and I ate sparingly in the knowledge that my natural voracity would surely kill me did I yield myself to it.  Never had sweeter morsels passed my lips, and I make free to confess that I shed tears of joy, again and again, at contemplation of that putrefied carcass.

My heart of hope beat strong in me once more.  Carefully I preserved the portions of the carcass remaining.  Carefully I covered my rock cisterns with flat stones so that the sun’s rays might not evaporate the precious fluid and in precaution against some upspringing of wind in the night and the sudden flying of spray.  Also I gathered me tiny fragments of seaweed and dried them in the sun for an easement between my poor body and the rough rocks whereon I made my lodging.  And my garments were dry—­the first time in days; so that I slept the heavy sleep of exhaustion and of returning health.

When I awoke to a new day I was another man.  The absence of the sun did not depress me, and I was swiftly to learn that God, not forgetting me while I slumbered, had prepared other and wonderful blessings for me.  I would have fain rubbed my eyes and looked again, for, as far as I could see, the rocks bordering upon the ocean were covered with seals.  There were thousands of them, and in the water other thousands disported themselves, while the sound that went up from all their throats was prodigious and deafening.  I knew it when:  I saw it—­meat lay there for the taking, meat sufficient for a score of ships’ companies.

I directly seized my oar—­than which there was no other stick of wood on the island—­and cautiously advanced upon all that immensity of provender.  It was quickly guessed by me that these creatures of the sea were unacquainted with man.  They betrayed no signals of timidity at my approach, and I found it a boy’s task to rap them on the head with the oar.

And when I had so killed my third and my fourth, I went immediately and strangely mad.  Indeed quite bereft was I of all judgment as I slew and slew and continued to slay.  For the space of two hours I toiled unceasingly with the oar till I was ready to drop.  What excess of slaughter I might have been guilty of I know not, for at the end of that time, as if by a signal, all the seals that still lived threw themselves into the water and swiftly disappeared.