slowly, silently, and glidingly,
without a sob or gurgle of escaping air, the wreck slid backward and
downward until it vanished beneath the waters, now gleaming in gold and
crimson with the last rays of the setting sun. A few seconds later the
great luminary also vanished, a sudden grey pallor overspread the ocean,
and I found myself alone indeed, swaying upon that vast, heaving
expanse, with nothing between me and death save the clumsy structure
that I had so laboriously put together, and which now looked so
insignificantly small that I caught myself wondering why my weight did
not sink it.

But it did not; on the contrary, the raft proved to be surprisingly
buoyant, riding over the great, glassy, round-backed hills of swell as
dry as a bone, with a gentle, swaying movement that somehow seemed to
soothe my fever-racked frame, so that the condition of semi-delirium
that had possessed me just before the felucca foundered passed away and
left me sufficiently self-possessed to recognise the necessity for
eating and drinking, if I was to survive and get the better of my
misfortunes. So I carefully opened my bundle and extracted from it a
small quantity of sun-dried biscuit--which, thanks to the curiously
gentle manner in which the raft had been launched, had received no
further wetting--and proceeded to make such a meal as I could, washing
it down with a sparing draught of wine. But although the biscuit had
dried superficially, it was still wet and pasty in the middle, and
horribly nauseous to the palate, so that I made but a poor meal; after
which I stretched myself at full length upon the raft, and endeavoured
to find relief in sleep. But, exhausted though I was, sleep would not
come to me; on the contrary, my memory and imagination rapidly became
painfully excited. I thought of Dominguez, and wondered whether he and
his companions had escaped the hurricane; then I thought of Morillo and
his fiendish hatred of me; and so my thoughts and fancies chased one
another until they became all mingled together in an inextricable
jumble; and through it all I heard myself singing, shouting, laughing,
arguing upon impossible subjects with wholly imaginary persons, and
performing I know not what other mad vagaries, until finally, I suppose,
I must have become so utterly exhausted as to have subsided into a
restless, feverish sleep.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

CAPTAIN LEMAITRE.

Consciousness returned to me with the sensation o