And she was going home to the writer of that letter, and he was left prisoner on the island. He cursed his generous folly, and writhed in agony at the thought. He raged with jealousy, so that his very grief was blunted for a time. He felt as if he must go mad. Then he prayed--prayed fervently. And at last, worn out with such fierce and contending emotions, he fell into a deep sleep, and did not wake till the sun was high in heaven. He woke; and the first thing he saw was the fatal letter lying at his feet in a narrow stream of sunshine that came peering in. He eyed it with horror. This, then, was then to haunt him by night and day. He eyed it and eyed it. Then turned his face from it; but could not help eying it again. And at last certain words in this letter seemed to him to bear an affinity to another piece of writing that had also caused him a great woe. Memory by its subtle links connected these two enemies of his together. He eyed it still more keenly, and that impression became strengthened. He took the letter and looked at it close, and held it at arm's length and devoured it; and the effect of this keen examination was very remarkable. It seemed to restore the man to energy and to something like hope. His eyes sparkled, and a triumphant "Ah!" burst from his bosom. He became once more a man of action. He rose, and bathed, and walked rapidly to and fro upon the sands, working himself up to a daring enterprise. He took his saw into the jungle, and cut down a tree of a kind common enough there. It was wonderfully soft, and almost as light as cork. The wood of this was literally useless for any other purpose than that to which Penfold destined it. He cut a great many blocks of this wood, and drilled holes in them, and, having hundreds of yard of good line, attached these quasi corks to the gunwale, so as to make a life-boat. This work took him several days, during which time an event occurred that encouraged him. One morning he saw about a million birds very busy in the bay, and it proved to be a spermaceti whale come ashore. He went out to her directly with all his tools, for he wanted oil for his enterprise, and the seal oil was exhausted. When he got near the whale in his boat, he observed a harpoon sticking in the animal's back. He cut steps with his ax in the slippery carcass, and got up to it as well as he could, extracted it by cutting and pulling, and threw it down into his boat, but not till he had taken the precaution to stick a great piece of blubber on the barbed point. He then sawed and hacked under difficulties, being buffeted and bothered with thousands of birds, so eager for slices that it was as much as he could do to avoid the making of minced fowl; but, true to his gentle creed, he contrived to get three hundred-weight of blubber without downright killing any of these greedy competitors, though he buffeted some of them, and nearly knocked out what little sense they had.