ost inclined to laugh out aloud
with joy!

"`Have you got anything to support you in the water?' he asked with
surprise.

"`No,' said I, `nothing but my own carcass and the use of my hands and
legs.'

"`The same with me, old ship,' he replied, `let's see who'll get to land
first.'

"`All right!' I cried, `start away!' and we both of us struck out hard;
but he was a far better swimmer than I was, and I soon lost sight of him
although I followed in the same track as well as I could steer.

"About noontide, when the sun had got vertical in the sky overhead and
blazed down with even greater power than it had done before, I had
another cheer up; for, as I rose on the send of the sea I could faintly
discover the tops of two trees in the distance standing out amidst the
waste of waters. This put additional pluck into me, and made me exert
myself to the utmost, as before then I could not see any sign of land at
all; but, after swimming on for some time I began to lose heart again
and became assailed by all manner of miserable fancies that almost made
me despair!

"I thought it was strange that I could not see Magellan, if he were
still in front of me, in the same way that I could observe the two
trees. He must have gone down at last and got drowned like the others,
I said to myself; or else a shark has snapped him up and made an end of
him, so that I alone was left out of all the thirteen of the pinnace's
crew. What was I reserved for?--a worse fate perhaps than the others--
possibly to reach a desolate shore, where I would starve to death in
solitude without a single soul to share my misery! The idea of sharks,
however, haunted me more than any other thought, for I knew that there
were plenty of these sea monsters in the Mozambique Channel, and I
dreaded more being caught by one of them than the mere fear of drowning,
which now seemed to lose all its terrors, although I still swam on
mechanically. Every time a wave broke over me, or when I splashed up
the water with my own feet, the haunting horror seized me that the wide
capacious maw and gaping saw-like teeth of a shark were ready to close
upon me, paralysing my heart nerves, and making my blood run cold right
through me. I never wish to pass through such a terrible time again,
sir--not for the mere peril I was in from the sea and the long distance
of water I had to traverse before I could hope to reach the end, so much
as from the thought that my shipmates we