ever looking on the future with such
hopelessness.

"And in this state of mind we crawled beneath our furs, feeling too
lonely and forsaken to have a thought to cook a meal, and so very, very
weary with the labor we had done, in running and wading through the
heavy snow, that we did not care for food; and in deep sleep we buried
up the heaviest sorrow that we had ever known,--the grievous sorrow of a
dead, dead hope,--the hope of rescue that had come and gone from us, as
the cloud-shadow flies across the summer field."

CHAPTER XVII.

A very Peculiar Person appears and disappears, and the
Castaways are filled alternately with Hope and Fear.

"How long we slept I have not the least idea. It may have been a whole
day, or it may have been two days. It was not a twenty years' sleep,
(how we wished it was!) like that of Rip Van Winkle, yet it was a very
long sleep; and, indeed, neither of us cared how long it lasted, we were
so heartbroken about what seemed to be the greatest misfortune that had
yet happened to us. If we woke up at any time, we went to sleep again as
quickly as possible, not caring at all to come back any sooner than was
necessary to the contemplation of our miserable situation,--never
reflecting for a moment that the situation had not been changed in the
least by the unknown man who had appeared and disappeared in such a
mysterious way. But the sight of him had brought our thoughts freshly
back to the world from which we had been cut off,--a world with human
beings in it like ourselves; and it was not unnatural, therefore, that
we should be made miserable by the event. And so we slept on and on, and
thus we drowned everything but our dreams, which are everywhere very apt
to be most bright and cheering in the most gloomy and despondent times.
Such, at least, was the case with me; and if I could have kept dreaming
and dreaming on forever, about pleasant things to eat, and pleasant
people talking to me, I should have been quite well satisfied.

"Thus you see what a great number of ups and downs we had,--sometimes
being cheerful and fully resigned, then again buried in the very depths
of despair. Sometimes we felt real pleasure in the life to which we had
become so well accustomed; and it seemed to us, as we chatted together
in our warm and well-lighted hut, that, since every necessary want was
well supplied, and we were entirely free from care, we should be well
satisfied to continue in that situa