I, Darrell Standing, cannot refrain from breaking in on this recital of an earlier existence in order to note a conclusion of my own.  Since human personality is a growth, a sum of all previous existences added together, what possibility was there for Warden Atherton to break down my spirit in the inquisition of solitary?  I am life that survived, a structure builded up through the ages of the past—­and such a past!  What were ten days and nights in the jacket to me?—­to me, who had once been Daniel Foss, and for eight years learned 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 resolve and deposited the carved oar in the Philadelphia Museum.