When
he would have fled, monstrous terrors met him at every turn, till he woke
and could sleep no more. Dawn widened over sky and sea, but its vast
beauty only mocked the castaway. All day long he wandered up and down and
along and across his glittering prison, no tiniest speck of canvas, no
faintest wreath of smoke, on any water's edge; the horror of his isolation
growing-growing?-like the monsters of his dream, and his whole nature wild
with a desire which was no longer a mere physical drought, but a passion
of the soul, that gave the will an unnatural energy and set at naught
every true interest of earth and heaven. Again and again he would have
shrieked its anguish, but the first note of his voice rebuked him to
silence as if he had espied himself in a glass. He fell on his face
voiceless, writhing, and promised himself, nay, pledged creation and its
Creator, that on the day of his return to the walks of men he would drink
the cup of madness and would drink it thenceforth till he died.
When night came again he paced the sands for hours and then fell to work
to drag by long and toiling zigzags to a favorable point on the southern
end of the island the mast he had saved, and to raise there a flag of
distress.
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