as
precious; therefore, without allowing myself an instant for pause and
hesitation, I quietly slid off the mainmast into the water and struck
out smoothly and steadily for a certain knoll ashore, in line with which
I had last seen the floating fragments that I desired to reach.

It was still blowing quite fresh, and there was a very heavy sea
running; but it no longer broke badly, and it was in my favour, every
sea that overtook me flinging me forward at least a couple of fathoms,
so that I made excellent progress, as I ascertained when I turned for a
moment to glance back at the mass of wreckage that I had just abandoned.
I saw also that, whatever happened, I must keep on, there must be no
thought of turning back, for while the run of the sea was helping me
grandly in my progress to leeward, it was powerful enough to render
return to my late refuge an impossibility; I, therefore, set my teeth
and, with my eyes fixed upon the distant knoll which was to serve me as
a guide, struck out with a long, quiet, steady stroke that I knew from
experience I could maintain for hours on end, if need were. Of course,
I kept a very sharp lookout for the wreckage that I was aiming for, but
saw nothing of it for a long time, and more than once a qualm of
something very nearly approaching terror seized me, as the idea
suggested itself that possibly I had missed my goal, and was every
moment leaving it farther behind me. I was fast approaching a state of
panic that might very easily have resulted in fatal consequences, when
it suddenly occurred to me that, of course, it would be quite impossible
for me to see those insignificant fragments of flotsam, unless they and
I each happened to be hove up on the crest of a wave at precisely the
same moment, and the reflection so far steadied my nerves that I was
able successfully to combat the almost irresistible impulse to put forth
my whole strength in a frantic struggle to increase my speed through the
water and quickly settle the question one way or the other. My reward
came to me some ten minutes later when, as I went soaring up on the
breast of an unusually high wave, I caught a momentary glimpse of what
was undoubtedly a small piece of plank of some sort floating in the
midst of a lacework of foam on the crest of a wave immediately in line
with the knoll by which I was directing my course, and which, like
everything else at a greater distance than some fifty or sixty fathoms,
I could onl