no possibility of making any farther way by the course in which he
had set out. Overcome now by his feelings, he threw himself among the
lumber in despair, and wept like a child. It was at this period that
he heard the crash occasioned by the bottle which I had thrown down.
Fortunate, indeed, was it that the incident occurred- for, upon this
incident, trivial as it appears, the thread of my destiny depended.
Many years elapsed, however, before I was aware of this fact. A
natural shame and regret for his weakness and indecision prevented
Augustus from confiding to me at once what a more intimate and
unreserved communion afterward induced him to reveal. Upon finding
his further progress in the hold impeded by obstacles which he could
not overcome, he had resolved to abandon his attempt at reaching me,
and return at once to the forecastle. Before condemning him entirely
on this head, the harassing circumstances which embarrassed him
should be taken into consideration. The night was fast wearing away,
and his absence from the forecastle might be discovered; and indeed
would necessarily be so, if be should fail to get back to the berth
by daybreak. His candle was expiring in the socket, and there would
be the greatest difficulty in retracing his way to the hatchway in
the dark. It must be allowed, too, that he had every good reason to
believe me dead; in which event no benefit could result to me from
his reaching the box, and a world of danger would be encountered to
no purpose by himself. He had repeatedly called, and I had made him
no answer. I had been now eleven days and nights with no more water
than that contained in the jug which he had left with me- a supply
which it was not at all probable I had boarded in the beginning of my
confinement, as I had every cause to expect a speedy release. The
atmosphere of the hold, too, must have appeared to him, coming from
the comparatively open air of the steerage, of a nature absolutely
poisonous, and by far more intolerable than it had seemed to me upon