y gradually raising the tube a few feet at a time I managed to empty
the water it contained into the hogshead, and then I breathed more
easily. As I did not wish to wait until the air in the hogshead had
been exhausted, I went to work on the bung in the next one, and soon
transferred the end of my tube to that, which would probably last me a
good while, for it was almost entirely free from water.

"Now I began to cogitate and wonder. I pulled in the end of the
signal-cord, and I found it had not been rubbed and torn by barnacles;
the end of it had been clean cut with a knife. I remembered that this
was the case with the air-tube; as I placed it into the bung-hole of the
first hogshead I had noticed how smoothly it had been severed.

"Now I felt a tug at the rope by which I was raised and lowered. I
didn't like this. If I should be pulled up I might be jerked away from
my air-supply and suffocate before I got to the surface. So I took a
turn of the rope around a stick of timber near by, and they might pull
as much as they chose without disturbing me. There I stood, and thought,
and wondered. But, above everything, I could not help feeling all the
time how good that air was! It seemed to go through every part of me. It
was better than wine; it was better than anything I had ever breathed or
tasted. A little while ago I was on the point of perishing. Now before
me there were tiers of hogsheads full of air! If it had not been that I
would be obliged to eat, I might have stayed down there as long as I
pleased.

"I had stayed a long time, and I was at work on the air in a third
hogshead--not having half used up the contents of the other two--before
I really made up my mind as to what had happened. I was sure that there
had been foul play, and I felt quite as sure that the stock-broker was
at the bottom of it. Except that man, there was no one on board the brig
who would wish to do me a harm. The stock-broker he hated me; I had seen
that in his face as plainly as if it had been painted on a sign-board. I
knew something which he did not know; I was trying to get something
which was to be kept a secret from him. If I could be put out of the way
he probably thought he might have some sort of a chance. I could not
fathom the man's mind, but that's the way it looked to me.

"I had been down there a long time, and it must have been getting toward
the end of the afternoon; so I prepared to leave my watery retirement.
I had made a