and produce
some saliva, but so dry were my lips that they only cracked in the
attempt.

I had scarcely hitherto believed that I should die, but now so terrible
were my sensations that I didn't expect to live many hours unless I
should be released. I thought over my past life. The numberless wrong
and foolish things I had done came back to my recollection, while not a
single good deed of any sort occurred to me. I thought of how often I
had vexed my father and mother, how impudent I had been to Aunt Deb, how
frequently unkind and disagreeable to my brothers and sisters. I tried
to be very sorry for everything, but all the time I was conscious that I
was not as sorry as I ought to have been.

Exhausted by my efforts as well as by my hunger and thirst, I lay
stretched upon the kelson till I had, I suppose, somewhat recovered.
Once more I said to myself, "It will not do to give in; out of this I
must get." I managed again to get on my feet, feeling about in all
directions. As I was doing so my hands touched what appeared to me like
the side of a large cask. I was certain of it. I could make out the
hoops which went round the cask, and the intervening spaces. Suddenly
it occurred to me that it was one of the water-casks of the ship stowed
in the lower tier. I put my ear to it, and as the ship rolled I could
hear the water move about. I felt, however, very much like the fellow I
had read about at school, who was placed when dying of thirst in the
midst of water which remained up to his chin, but into which he could
never get his mouth. Here was the water, but how I was to reach it was
the question.

I felt about in the hope that some moisture might be coming through;
even a few drops would help to cool my parched tongue, though I could
have drunk a gallon without stopping, but the cask was strong and
perfectly dry outside. I considered whether it would be possible to
knock a hole in the cask, but I had no instrument for the purpose, and
should not have had strength to use it even if I had found it. It was
indeed tantalising to hear the water washing to and fro, and yet not be
able to obtain a drop. By chance I happened to put my hands in my
pockets, which always contained a knife, bits of string, and all sorts
of things. Suddenly I recollected that I had been making a stand for my
cutter before she was stolen, and that I had had a gimlet to bore holes
in the wood. To my joy I found that I had fixed a cor