At last he hit on the idea of putting a piece of bamboo, which is as hollow as a reed and light as a cork, under his chest and arms, and so trusted himself to the sea.
Once the bamboo slipped from under him, and he was nearly drowned. At another time a shovel-nosed shark struck him on the thigh, and but for the shallowness of the water, "which prevented its mouth getting round" at him, he would have perished miserably. Practice, however, soon made him a good swimmer, and in spite of the sharks he swam over to the little island daily to escape the flies.
He had built a hut, if it could be called such, by taking fallen branches and fastening them by means of split palmetto leaves to the hanging boughs. This sheltered him from the noonday sun and the heavy night dews. The entrance of this hut "was made to look toward the sea," in hopes of rescue.
"I had had the approbation of my father and mother," he piously reflects, "in going to sea, and I trusted it would please God in His own time and manner to provide for my return to my father's house."
But in the mean time he endured frightful sufferings. His feet became very sore from walking on "the hot beach, with its sharp, broken shells," and sometimes, "though treading with all possible caution," a shell on the beach or a stick in the woods would open an old wound, inflicting such agony that he would fall down suddenly as if he had been shot. Rather than risk any more such misery, he would sometimes sit for a whole day, with his back against a tree, looking with tearful eyes for the vessel that never came.
ASHTON PROTECTING HIMSELF FROM THE WILD-BOAR.
Once, when faint from such injuries, a wild-boar ran at him. He could not stand, but caught at the bough of the tree above him, and hung suspended while the beast made his charge. "He tore away a portion of my ragged trousers, and then went on his way, which I considered to have been a very great deliverance."
These hardships, and the living almost entirely on fruit, brought him to great extremities. He "often fell to the ground insensible," and thought every night would be his last. He lost count of the days of the week, and then of the month. The rainy season came on, and he grew worse.
At one time—as he judged in November—he saw a sight which, had he been himself, would have filled him with joy. He beheld a small canoe approaching the shore, with a single man in it. The spectacle excited little emotion. "I kept my seat on the beach, thinking that I could not expect a friend, and being in no condition to resist an enemy."