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Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 1 by Robert Louis Stevenson
page 63 of 413 (15%)
certainly too good to be true.

Yesterday I walked too far, and spent all the afternoon on the
outside of my bed; went finally to rest at nine, and slept nearly
twelve hours on the stretch. Bennet (the doctor), when told of it
this morning, augured well for my recovery; he said youth must be
putting in strong; of course I ought not to have slept at all. As
it was, I dreamed HORRIDLY; but not my usual dreams of social
miseries and misunderstandings and all sorts of crucifixions of the
spirit; but of good, cheery, physical things - of long successions
of vaulted, dimly lit cellars full of black water, in which I went
swimming among toads and unutterable, cold, blind fishes. Now and
then these cellars opened up into sort of domed music-hall places,
where one could land for a little on the slope of the orchestra,
but a sort of horror prevented one from staying long, and made one
plunge back again into the dead waters. Then my dream changed, and
I was a sort of Siamese pirate, on a very high deck with several
others. The ship was almost captured, and we were fighting
desperately. The hideous engines we used and the perfectly
incredible carnage that we effected by means of them kept me
cheery, as you may imagine; especially as I felt all the time my
sympathy with the boarders, and knew that I was only a prisoner
with these horrid Malays. Then I saw a signal being given, and
knew they were going to blow up the ship. I leaped right off, and
heard my captors splash in the water after me as thick as pebbles
when a bit of river bank has given way beneath the foot. I never
heard the ship blow up; but I spent the rest of the night swimming
about some piles with the whole sea full of Malays, searching for
me with knives in their mouths. They could swim any distance under
water, and every now and again, just as I was beginning to reckon
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