t of
nothing else, could see nothing else. Satisfied, however, that my fast
would hold, I ran forward to look down on the top, that the strain of the
hawser had brought directly under the very bow, over which it had fallen.
It was empty! The object I had mistaken for Marble, dead or asleep, was a
part of the bunt of the main-top-sail, that had been hauled down over the
top-rim, and secured there, either to form a sort of shelter against the
breaking seas, or a bed. Whatever may have been the intention of this
nest, it no longer had an occupant. Marble had probably been washed away,
in one of his adventurous efforts to make himself more secure or more
comfortable.

The disappointment that came over me, as I ascertained this fact, was
scarcely less painful than the anguish I had felt when I first saw my mate
carried off into the ocean There would have been a melancholy satisfaction
in finding his body, that we might have gone to the bottom together, at
least, and thus have slept in a common grave, in the depths of that ocean
over which we had sailed so many thousands of leagues in company. I went
and threw myself on the deck, regardless of my own fate, and wept in very
bitterness of heart. I had arranged a mattress on the quarter-deck, and it
was on that I now threw myself. Fatigue overcame me, in the end, and I
fell into a deep sleep. As my recollection left me, my last thought was
that I should go down with the ship, as I lay there. So complete was the
triumph of nature, that I did not even dream. I do not remember ever to
have enjoyed more profound and refreshing slumbers; slumbers that
continued until returning light awoke me. To that night's rest I am
probably indebted, under God, for having the means of relating these
adventures.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the night had been tranquil;
otherwise, a seaman's ears would have given him the alarm. When I arose, I
found the ocean glittering like a mirror, with no other motion than that
which has so often been likened to the slumbering respiration of some
huge animal. The wreck was thumping against the ship's bottom, announcing
its presence, before I left the mattress. Of wind there was literally not
a breath. Once in a while, the ship would seem to come up to breathe, as a
heavy groundswell rolled along her sides, and the wash of the element told
the circumstance of such a visit; else, all was as still as the ocean in
its infancy. I knelt, again, and prayed to