And now once more I was sufficiently rational to take cognisance of the flight of time. I was not at all certain of my bearings, but I felt that the sun must certainly have crossed the meridian--that the eternity of suffering through which I had passed could never have been compressed into a short half-hour or so--and if I was correct in this surmise the hour must be somewhere about three o'clock in the afternoon. Three o'clock in the afternoon! And the land still so far away that many further hours of toil and agony must be endured ere I might hope to reach it! My brain reeled again at the mere prospect of it, and in a perfect frenzy of despair I resumed my paddle, crying aloud mad, incoherent prayers to God that He would either send me help in my extremity, or mercifully put an immediate end to my sufferings. Then another thought came to torment me: in something like three hours the sun would set, darkness would encompass me about, and if the sky should become obscured with clouds and the stars be hidden, how should I continue to find my way? At that idea I looked about me--my mind had been too confused, and too busily occupied with other matters to take intelligent note of the weather during the last few hours--and I was somewhat relieved to observe that the sky was now clear, save for a few scattered, solemnly drifting clouds, that the weather had a tolerably settled appearance, that the wind had moderated to quite a gentle breeze, and that the sea had gone down very considerably and was no longer breaking. This certainly was a point in my favour, since I was not any longer in momentary peril of being capsized or washed off my frail ark; but the advantage was to a certain extent counterbalanced by the fact that the run of the sea was not materially helping me.