first to last; and I can only conjecture that the fire raged four or
five hours, from the fact that it was midnight by my watch when I
left it on my cabin drawers, and that the final extinction of the
smouldering keel was so soon followed by the first deep hint of dawn.
The rest took place with the trite rapidity of the equatorial
latitudes. It had been my foolish way to pooh-pooh the old saying
that there is no twilight in the tropics. I saw more truth in it
as I lay lonely on this heaving waste.

The stars were out; the sea was silver; the sun was up.

And oh! the awful glory of that sunrise! It was terrific; it was
sickening; my senses swam. Sunlit billows smooth and sinister,
without a crest, without a sound; miles and miles of them as I
rose; an oily grave among them as I fell. Hill after hill of horror,
valley after valley of despair! The face of the waters in petty but
eternal unrest; and now the sun must shine to set it smiling, to
show me its cruel ceaseless mouthings, to reveal all but the
ghastlier horrors underneath.

How deep was it? I fell to wondering! Not that it makes any
difference whether you drown in one fathom or in ten thousand,
whether you fall from a balloon or from the attic window. But the
greater depth or distance is the worse to contemplate; and I was as
a man hanging by his hands so high above the world, that his dangling
feet cover countries, continents; a man who must fall very soon, and
wonders how long he will be falling, falling; and how far his soul
will bear his body company.

In time I became more accustomed to the sun upon this heaving void;