But what does surprise me--as I think of it now, though it did not in any way touch me then--was the slowness with which, when there was reason for it, my dead hope got alive again: as it did, and for cause, at the end of that same second day--for by the evening I came out, with a sharp suddenness, from among the strange old craft which for so long on every side had beset me and found myself among ships which by comparison with the others--though they too, in all conscience, were old enough--seemed to be quite of a modern build. What is likely, I think--and this would help to account for my long wanderings over those ancient rotten hulks--is that some stormy commotion of the whole mass of wreckage, such as had thrust the barque whereon I had found food deep into the thick of it, had squeezed a part of the centre of the pack outward; in that way making a sort of promontory--along which by mere bad mischance I had been journeying--among the wrecks of a later time. But this notion did not then occur to me; nor did I, as I have said, at first feel any very thrilling hope coming back to me when I found myself among modern ships again--so worn had my long tussle with difficulties left my body and so sodden was my mind. At first I had just a dull feeling of satisfaction that I had got once more--after my many nights passed on hulks soaked with wet to rottenness--on good honest dry planks: where I could sleep with no deadly chill striking into me, and where in my restless wakings I should not see the pale gleam of death-fires, and where foul stenches would not half stifle me the whole night long. And it was not until I had eaten my scant supper, and because of the comfort that even that little food gave me felt more disposed to cheerfulness, that in a weak faint-hearted way I began to hope again that perhaps the run of luck against me had come to an end. In truth, though, there was not much to be hopeful about. For my supper I had eaten the half of what food was left me, and it was so little that I still had a mighty hungry feeling in my belly after it was down. For my breakfast I should eat what was left; and after that, unless I found fresh supplies quickly, I was in a fair way to lie down beside my bag of jewels and die of starvation--like the veriest beggar that ever was. But I did hope a little all the same; and when I went on again the next morning, though my last scrap of food was eaten, my spirits kept up pretty well--for I was sure from the look of the wrecks which I traversed that the dead ancient centre of my continent at last was behind me, and that its living outer fringe could not be very far away.