XXX I COME TO THE WALL OF MY SEA-PRISON The morning shower that waked me gave me the water that I so longed for; but it only a little refreshed me, because my chief need was food. Being past the first sharp pangs of hunger, I was in no great bodily pain; but a heavy languor was upon me that dulled me in both flesh and spirit and disposed me to give up struggling for a while, that I might enjoy what seemed to me just then to be the supreme delight of sitting still. Yet I had sense enough to know that if I surrendered to this feeling it would be the end of me; and after a little I found energy enough to throw it off. I was helped thus to rouse myself by finding, as I looked around me with dull eyes, that the hulk I had come aboard of in such a hurry in the twilight certainly had not been wrecked for any great length of time. She was a good-sized schooner, quite modern in her build; and, although she had weathered everywhere to a pale gray, her timbers were not rotten and what was left of her cordage still was fairly sound: all of which, as I took it in slowly, gave me hope of finding aboard of her some sort of eatable food. But while this hope was slow to shape itself in my heavy mind, I was quick enough to act upon it when once it had taken form. With a briskness that quite astonished me I got on my feet and walked aft to the cabin--the cabin pantry being the most likely place in which to look for food put up in tins; and I was farther encouraged by finding the hatch open and the cabin itself fresh-smelling and clean. And, to my joy, the food that I hoped to find in the pantry really was there; and such a plenty of it that I could not have eaten it in a whole year. I had the good sense to go slowly--and that was not easy, for at sight of something that would satisfy it my hunger all of a sudden woke up ragingly; but I knew that I stood a good chance of killing myself after my long fast unless I held my appetite well in hand, and so I began with a tin of peaches--opening it with a knife that I found there--and it seemed to me that those peaches were the most delicious thing that I had tasted since I was born. After they were down I went on deck again--to be out of reach of temptation--and staid there resolutely for an hour; getting at this time, and also keeping myself a little quiet, by counting six thousand slowly--and it did seem to me as though I never should get to the end! Then I had another of those delicious tins; and after a trying half hour of waiting I had a third; and then--being no longer ravenous, and no longer having the feeling of infinite emptiness--I laid down on the deck just outside the cabin scuttle and slept like a tree in winter until well along in the afternoon.