turns to the dreamer the
most reasonable and the most preposterous of conceptions, just as the
reasoning or imaginative faculties flicker, alternately, one above the
other. At last an idea occurred to me which seemed rational, and which
gave me cause to wonder, very justly, that I had not entertained
it before. I placed the slip of paper on the back of a book, and,
collecting the fragments of the phosphorus matches which I had brought
from the barrel, laid them together upon the paper. I then, with the
palm of my hand, rubbed the whole over quickly, yet steadily. A clear
light diffused itself immediately throughout the whole surface; and had
there been any writing upon it, I should not have experienced the
least difficulty, I am sure, in reading it. Not a syllable was there,
however--nothing but a dreary and unsatisfactory blank; the illumination
died away in a few seconds, and my heart died away within me as it went.

I have before stated more than once that my intellect, for some period
prior to this, had been in a condition nearly bordering on idiocy. There
were, to be sure, momentary intervals of perfect sanity, and, now and
then, even of energy; but these were few. It must be remembered that
I had been, for many days certainly, inhaling the almost pestilential
atmosphere of a close hold in a whaling vessel, and for a long portion
of that time but scantily supplied with water. For the last fourteen
or fifteen hours I had none--nor had I slept during that time. Salt
provisions of the most exciting kind had been my chief, and, indeed,
since the loss of the mutton, my only supply of food, with the exception
of the sea-biscuit; and these latter were utterly useless to me, as
they were too dry and hard to be swallowed in the swollen and parched
condition of my throat. I was now in a high state of fever, and in
every respect exceedingly ill. This will account for the fact that many
miserable hours of despondency elapsed after my last adventure with the
phosphorus, before the thought suggested itself that I had examined only
one side of the paper. I shall not attempt to describe my feelings
of rage (for I believe I was more angry than any thing else) when the
egregious oversight I had committed flashed suddenly upon my perception.
The blunder itself would have been unimportant, had not my own folly and
impetuosity rendered it otherwise--in my disappointment at not finding
some words upon the slip, I had childishly torn it i