mile. They must instantly have heard me, could I have halloed; but
my throat refused its office. I reckoned that they continued to
row here and there for about half an hour, during which they were
several times hailed by the captain, as I supposed; the sound of
the oars then died. A little later I heard the very faint noises
made by their hoisting the boat and hauling in upon the braces,
and then there was nothing for me to do but to watch, with dying
eyes, the shadow of the ship till it faded, and the stars shone
where she had been.

The sky shed very little light, and there was no foam to cast an
illumination of its own. However, by this time, as you will suppose,
I was used to my situation; that is to say, the horror and novelty
of my condition had abated, and settled into a miserable feeling
of despair; so that I was like a dying man who had passed days in
an open boat, and who languidly directs his eyes over the gunwale
at the sea, with the hopelessness that is bred by familiarity with
his dreadful posture. It was some time after the ship had melted
into the airy dusk that I seemed to notice, for the first time
since I had been in the life-buoy, the lump of blackness at which
I had been straining my eyes when the vessel heeled and I fell.
It had the elusiveness of a light at sea, that is best seen (at
a distance) by gazing a little on one side of it. It lay, a black
mass, and whether it was a vast huddle of weeds, or a great whale
killed by the earthquake, or solid land uphove by the volcanic
rupture, was not conjecturable. It hung, still and not very tall,
for I could not see that it put out any stars, and was about a mile
distant. Whatever it might prove, I could not be worse off near
or on or amid it than i was here; so, setting my face toward it,
I began to strike out with my legs and arms.