I went below to the pantry, striking a match to see my way by; and when I had lighted the big lamp that was hanging there--the glass chimney of which, in some wonderful way, had pulled through the crash which had sent the mizzen-mast flying--the place seemed so cheerful that my desire for supper increased prodigiously, and tended still farther to down my sorrowful thoughts. I even had a notion of trying to light a fire in the galley and cooking over it some of the beef or mutton that I had found in the cold-room; but I gave that up, just then, because I really was too hungry to wait until I could carry through so large a plan. But there was a plenty of good food in tins easily to be got at; and what was still better I felt quite strong enough to eat a lot of it without hurting myself. I even went at my meal a little daintily, spreading a napkin--that I got from a locker filled with table linen--on the pantry dresser, and setting out on it a tin of chicken and a bunch of cheese and some bread which was pretty stale and hard and a pot of jam to end off with; and from the wine-room I brought a bottle of good Bordeaux. As I ate my supper, greatly relishing it, the oddness of what I was doing did not occur to me; but often since I have thought how strange was that meal of mine--in that brightly lighted cosey little room, and myself really cheerful over it--in its contrast with the utterly desperate strait in which I was. And I think that the contrast was still sharper, my supper being ended, when I fetched a steamer-chair that I had noticed lying on the floor of the cabin and settled myself in it easily--facing toward the stern, so that the slope of the deck only made the slope of the chair still easier--and so sat there in the brightness smoking a very good cigar. And after a while--what with my comfort of body, and the good meal in my stomach, and the good wine there too--a soothing drowsiness stole over me, and I had the feeling that in another moment or two I should fall away into a delicious doze. And then, all of a sudden, I was roused wide awake again by hearing faintly, but quite distinctly, a long and piercingly shrill cry. I fairly jumped from my chair, so greatly was I startled; and for a good while I stood quite still, drawing my breath softly, in waiting wonder for that strange cry to come again. But it did not come again--and as the silence continued I fell to doubting if I had not been asleep, and that this sound which had seemed so real to me had not been only a part of a dream. XIV OF MY MEETING WITH A MURDERED MAN Robinson Crusoe's footprint in the sand did not startle him more than that strange lonely cry startled me. Indeed, as between the two of us, I had rather the worse of it: for Crusoe, at least, knew that he was dealing with a reality, while I could not be certain that I was not dealing with a bit of a dream in which there was no reality at all.