One effect of extreme exhaustion is to make the mind almost reckless of risk, and we can well understand how in some shipwrecks, after days and nights without sleep, men are in a placid, callous composure of sheer weariness, and that the last agony of drowning then is nothing, just as Dr. Livingstone told me, the shake given by a lion to his victim paralyses the whole system before it is killed. Therefore, as danger was only likely, and sleep was imperative, I must have sleep at all hazards, and so we loosed out the folds of the main-sail on the wet deck. How white and creamy they looked while all was dark around, for no moon had risen. Then I put on my life-belt, and fastened the ship’s light where it would not swing, but rested quite close to the deck. I rolled the thick, dry, and ample main-sail round me, stretching my limbs in charming freedom, and I tied myself to the boom, so as not to be easily jerked overboard by the waves. Of course it was my firm intention to sleep only by winks of one eye at a time; but the struggle with Morpheus was, we suspect, very faint; at any rate no record remained but a few dim visions that may have flickered in the soft vanishing of consciousness.
Can any person be expected to describe his first feelings as he awakes in such a bed and finds it broad day? Bright and glorious sun, high up, how I stared at you! and then a glance to the side, and behold, there is land—England. Deliberately I rose and gave three hearty cheers—nobody there to hear, indeed, but myself—no matter, it did good to me to cheer, and to hear too. Breakfast was soon agoing. Ten hours’ sleep had thoroughly refreshed me, mind and body; but I could not make out what part of the coast we had hit upon.
It was still about twelve miles distant, and as there were no cliffs in sight, it could not be the Isle of Wight. My chart told nothing; my French Pilot-book had woodcut pictures of all the coast, but nothing came of the search in these; and whether we had drifted east or west of the Isle of Wight we finally gave up as a question—we must go to the coast itself and see.
Therefore we steered due north, rapidly nearing the unknown land, and with a joyous morning, barometer high, wind south, and a coming fine day. Presently there loomed on the horizon one, and then another, and another, splendid ships of war. They steamed in line, and I tried to intercept them to put the query, “Where am I?” Baffled in this, the puzzle was, “Are they going to Portsmouth or Plymouth?” There were equally good reasons for either.
At length three towns could be seen, and the pictures of the French Pilot-book were closely examined, but several plates had each three towns which would fit the case before me, one as well as the other. Fortunately we chose the middle one of the three, because it had a little lighthouse. That on the left we found afterwards was Bognor, which has a reef of dangerous rocks upon its shore.
A fisherman was in his boat, and I hailed him, “Boat ahoy! What is the name of that town?”
“Town, sir?”
“Yes; that village right ahead; what do you call it?”
“The village there, sir?”
“Yes; what is its name? It has a name, hasn’t it?”