with
this difference, that the case having been tilted on its side, the
biscuits had been lying with their edges in a horizontal position,
whereas I now built them vertically--the proper mode of packing such
goods, and the way in which they had been placed when they came from the
stores of the baker. Of course, it mattered not which way, as regards
the space they would take up. On the flat side, or on their edges, it
was all the same; and when I counted in the thirty-one dozen and four
odd, the box was full, with only a little empty space in the corner,
which the eight missing biscuits had formerly occupied.

So, then, I had taken stock of my larder, and now knew the exact amount
of provision I had to depend upon. With two biscuits _per diem_ I could
stand siege for a little better than six months. It would not be high
living, yet I resolved to do with even less, for I could not feel
certain that six months would be the full period of my privations. I
formed the resolution to make two a day the rule, and never to exceed
that number; and on such days as I felt best able to bear hunger, I
should stint my measure a quarter or half a biscuit, or even a whole
one, if I found it possible. This economic purpose, if successfully
carried out, would throw forward the day of absolute want to a much
longer period than six months.

My food being thus rationed out, it appeared equally necessary that I
should know the quantity of water I might use each day. To ascertain
this, at first appeared to be beyond my power. Apparently I had no
means of measuring what remained in the butt. It was an old wine or
spirit cask--for such are the vessels generally used on board ships to
carry water for their crews--but what kind of wine-cask I could not
tell, and therefore I could not even guess at the quantity it might have
contained when full. Could I only have established this point, I should
then have been able to make a rough calculation as to what had been
already spent; rough, but perhaps sufficiently precise for my purpose.

I remembered well the _table of liquid measure_--I had good reason to
remember it--the most difficult of all the tables to commit to memory.
I had received many a smart rodding, before I was able to repeat it
over; but I at length succeeded in getting it _pit-pat_.

I knew that wine-casks are of very different dimensions, according to
the sort of wine they contain: that under the different names of
"pipes",