d waiting for the onset and
listening for the approach of the enemy, the excitement that ensued
was a positive relief from the dull despair into which I had sunk but
a moment before.

Yet, though I waited for a new attack, I waited in vain. The monster
did not come back. Either the flash and the noise had terrified him,
or the bullets had hit him, or else in his vastness he had been
indifferent to so feeble a creature as myself; but whatever may have
been the cause, he did not emerge again out of the darkness and
silence into which he had sunk. For a long time I stood waiting; then
I sat down, still watchful, still listening, but without any result,
until at length I began to think that there was no chance of any new
attack. Indeed, it seemed now as though there had been no attack at
all, but that the monster had been swimming at random without any
thought of me, in which case my rifle-flashes had terrified him more
than his fearful form had terrified me. On the whole this incident
had greatly benefited me. It had roused me from my despair. I grew
reckless, and felt a disposition to acquiesce in whatever fate might
have in store for me.

And now, worn out with fatigue and exhausted from long watchfulness
and anxiety, I sank down in the bottom of the boat and fell into a
deep sleep.

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW WORLD

How long I slept I do not know. My sleep was profound, yet disturbed
by troubled dreams, in which I lived over again all the eventful
scenes of the past; and these were all intermingled in the wildest
confusion. The cannibals beckoned to us from the peak, and we landed
between the two volcanoes. There the body of the dead sailor received
us, and afterward chased us to the boat. Then came snow and volcanic
eruptions, and we drifted amid icebergs and molten lava until we
entered an iron portal and plunged into darkness. Here there were vast
swimming monsters and burning orbs of fire and thunderous cataracts
falling from inconceivable heights, and the sweep of immeasurable
tides and the circling of infinite whirlpools; while in my ears there
rang the never-ending roar of remorseless waters that came after us,
with all their waves and billows rolling upon us. It was a dream in
which all the material terrors of the past were renewed; but these
were all as nothing when compared with a certain deep underlying
feeling that possessed my soul--a sense of loss irretrievable, an
expectation of impending doom, a d