‘More than once I felt tempted to throw the lot overboard and follow it.
‘But youth and health and strength are indeed wondrous things, and a man possessed of them will do and dare much before giving up entirely, no matter how drear the outlook, how sharp the arrows of fate which transfix him!
‘Feeling weary and fagged, I lay down in the boat and slept, I suppose, for hours very soundly.
‘The awaking was bad—worse even than the first time.
‘One thing comforted me somewhat. I found that by the constant endeavour to use my eyes in the darkness I was becoming able to discern at least the dim outlines of objects.
[246]
]‘Renewing the fire with a lot of driftwood I picked up at the further side of my islet, I proceeded to carry out a plan I had formed. Taking the gratings out of the stern-sheets, I arranged them firmly in the bows. Then, breaking off projecting lumps and knobs of lava, I beat them smaller with an iron pin, which I fortunately found in the boat, and spread them thickly over the gratings, thus forming a sort of stage. Upon this I built a substantial fire. I was, you see, bound on a voyage of exploration.
‘There might, possibly, be some avenue to freedom out of this subterranean sea other than the one I had entered it from, exit by which was, of course, hopeless.
‘It was, I argued, useless to stay on the rock. I could not be much worse off, no matter where I got to.
‘How I yearned and hungered for light no tongue could tell. It seemed so hard to wander in the gloom for a brief night of existence. And then, the end! Do you, any of you, wonder at my hair turning grey?
‘As I scraped the last embers off the islet on to the tin dish used as a baler, in order to throw them on the new fire, [the light fell full upon the corpse], which, to all appearance, had just floated alongside.