OAST.

Four days did I pass in that little open boat.

The first day was fine, till sunset; it then blew fresh from the
north-west, and I was obliged to keep the boat before the wind. The next
day was dark and turbulent, with heavy falls of snow and a high swell
from the north, and the wind a small gale. On the third day the sun
shone, and it was a fair day, but horribly cold, and I saw two icebergs
like clouds upon the far western sea-line. There followed a cruel night
of clouded skies, sleet, and snow, and a very troubled sea; and then
broke the fourth day, as softly brilliant as an English May day, but
cold--great God, how cold!

Thus might I epitomize this passage; and I do so to spare you the
weariness of a relation of uneventful suffering.

In those four days I mainly ran before the wind, and in this way drove
many leagues south, though whenever a chance offered I hauled my sheet
for the east. I know not, I am sure, how the boat lived. I might pretend
it was due to my clever management--I do not say I had no share in my
own preservation, but to God belongs all the praise.

In the blackness of the first night the sea boiled all about me. The
boat leapt into hollows in which the sail slapped the mast. One look
behind me at the high dark curl of the oncoming surge had so affrighted
me that I never durst turn my head again lest the sight should deprive
me of the nerve to hold the oar with which I steered. I sat as squarely
as the task of steering would suffer, trusting that if a sea should
tumble over the stern my back would serve as a breakwater, and save the
boat from being swamped. The whole sail was on her, and I could not help
myself; for it would have been certain death to quit the steering oar
for an instant. It was this that saved me, perhaps; for the boat blew
along with such prodigious speed, running to the height of a sea as
though she meant to dart from that eminence into the air, that the slope
of each following surge swung like a pendulum under her, and though her
sail was becalmed in the trough, her momentum was so great that she was
speeding up the acclivity and catching the whole weight of the wind
afresh before there was time for her to lose way.

I was nearly dead with cold and misery when the morning came, but the
sparkling sun and the blue sky cheered me, and as wind and sea fell with
the soaring of the orb, I was enabled to flatten aft the sheet and let
the boat steer herself whilst I bea