Soon the motion of the vessel threw him, already sickened by the horrible smells and closeness of the hold, into agonies of sea-sickness, and he lay on the bales vomiting violently, and feeling as if his soul were rending his aching body asunder. By and by, he crawled down into the well-like cavity under the hatch, where there was a little more room to breathe in, and there he lay without food, without drink, almost without air, for three days. Days of sickness too loathsome to be described, too dreadful for permitted language to convey. Days of utter prostration, of griping pain, of wrenching convulsions, of horror indescribable, of tortured death-in-life. Days when the ropy and putrid air was sucked into the feeble lungs as if it were some strangling substance; when the oppressed heart beat slowly with dull knocks as though it would burst the bosom, and the bosom labored as though it were loaded down with tons of iron. Days when sleep came down like a weight of lead upon the brain, and struggled with infernal dreams, and was broken to fight off an ever-returning swarm of rats—invisible vermin that swarmed over his invisible body when it lay still, and were heard squeaking and pattering off in the sightless darkness when he feebly flung about his limbs to beat them away. Days whose mad, disgustful horror was desperately borne for the hope of liberty, for the hatred of slavery—borne till he could bear it no longer, and he resolved to beat upon the hatch and cry aloud to let those above him know what a hell of agony raged beneath their feet. How long he had been immured he did not know. Count time by anguish, and it might have been centuries. Fearful of discovering himself till he was too far from the land from which he had fled to be returned, he had resolved to endure till endurance became impossible. For this he had clung to life, for this he had silently borne the horrors of his tomb, for this he had striven a hundred times against the desire to end his imprisonment by shouting aloud to those above him. Now when heavy torpor and gradual giddiness were stealing upon him, and the instinct of his soul told him death was drawing near, he roused himself for the long deferred effort.