Lives of Alcyone

cocoanuts as he thought safe, weighing down his boat merely to the
water’ s edge.
He started at daybreak the following morning and found that
his sail acted on the whole better than he expected, but he was
acutely conscious that at the first real puff of wind the whole thing
would infallibly go over. He rowed for an hour or so at intervals,
being exceedingly anxious to hasten the voyage as much as
possible, and at the same time to economise his strength, because
he knew neither how long it would last nor what kind of reception he
would be likely to meet with at its end. During the day he made what
he felt under the circumstances to be satisfactory progress, and the
wind was so gentle and so steady that he was able to doze a good
deal during the night. The next morning found him out of sight of his
friendly little islet, and entirely alone in the centre of a vast horizon.
All day long he moved on, with little of incident to break the
monotony, though his store of food and cocoanuts was diminishing
with alarming rapidity. Three more days and nights passed without
any change worth chronicling, and by this time he had little food or
water left, but yet there was no sign of any sort that he was
approaching the mainland.
During the next night he was dozing as usual when he was
suddenly rudely awakened by the rough movement of the boat, and
in a moment found his sail torn away from its mast and carried off
into space. It was a squall which lasted only a few minutes, and was
accompanied by a heavy shower of rain, but nevertheless it had
robbed him at one stroke of his principal means of progression. He
still rowed at intervals whenever he felt equal to it, but did not press
himself greatly, as he had after all no certain knowledge of the
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