d
the first thing to do was to take care of my strength. I made shift to
divest myself of a heavy pea-jacket that I was wearing and of the
unnecessary clothing beneath it; I got rid, too, of my boots. And after
resting a bit on my back and considering matters, I decided to make a try
for land--I might perhaps meet some boat coming out. I lifted my head
well up and took a glance at what I could see--and my heart sank at what
I did see! The yacht was a speck in the distance by that time, and far
beyond it the Cheviots and the Lammermoors were mere bits of grey outline
against the gold and crimson of the sky. One thought instantly filled and
depressed me--I was further from land than I had believed.

At this distance from it I have but confused and vague recollections of
that night. Sometimes I dream of it--even now--and wake sweating with
fear. In those dreams I am toiling and toiling through a smooth sea--it
is always a smooth, oily, slippery sea--towards something to which I make
no great headway. Sometimes I give up toiling through sheer and desperate
aching of body and limbs, and let myself lie drifting into helplessness
and a growing sleep. And then--in my dream--I start to find myself going
down into strange cavernous depths of shining green, and I wake--in my
dream--to begin fighting and toiling again against my compelling desire
to give up.

I do not know how long I made a fight of it in reality; it must have been
for hours--alternately swimming, alternately resting myself by floating.
I had queer thoughts. It was then about the time that some men were
attempting to swim the Channel. I remember laughing grimly, wishing them
joy of their job--they were welcome to mine! I remember, too, that at
last in the darkness I felt that I must give up, and said my prayers; and
it was about that time, when I was beginning to feel a certain numbness
of mind as well as weariness of body, that as I struck out in the
mechanical and weakening fashion which I kept up from what little
determination I had left, I came across my salvation--in the shape of a
piece of wreckage that shoved itself against me in the blackness, as if
it had been some faithful dog, pushing its nose into my hand to let me
know it was there. It was no more than a square of grating, but it was
heavy and substantial; and as I clung to and climbed on to it, I knew
that it made all the difference to me between life and death.

CHAPTER XX

THE SAMARITAN SK