The imminence of night-fall made clear to me that I had no chance whatever of getting out from among those long-dead ships before the next morning; and this certainty was the harder to bear because I was desperately hungry--more than six hours having passed since I had eaten anything--and thirsty too: though my thirst, because of the dampness of the haze I suppose, was not very severe. But the belief that I really was advancing toward the coast of my strange floating continent and that I should find both food and drink when I got there, made me press forward; comforting myself as well as I could with the reflection that even though I did have to keep a hungry and thirsty vigil among those old withered hulks I yet should be the nearer, by every one of them that I put behind me that night, to the freshly come in wrecks on the coast line--where I made sure of finding a breakfast on the following day. Moreover, I knew how forlornly miserable I should be the moment that I lost the excitement of scrambling and climbing and just sat down there among the ancient dead, with the darkness closing over me, to wait for the slow coming of another day. And my dread of that desolate loneliness urged me to push forward while the least bit of daylight was left by which to see my way. It was ticklish work, as the dusk deepened, getting from one wreck to another; and at last--after nearly going down into the weed between two of them, because of a rotten belaying-pin that I caught at breaking in my hand--I had to resign myself to giving over until morning any farther attempt to advance. But I was cheered by the thought that I had got on a good way in the hour or more that had gone since I had left the _Wasp_ behind me; and so I tried to make the best of things as I cast around me for some sheltered nook on the deck of the vessel I had come aboard of--a little clumsy old brig--where my night might be passed. As to going below, either into the cabin or the forecastle, I could not bring myself to it; for my heart failed me at the thought of what I might touch in the darkness there, and my mind--sore and troubled by all that I had passed through, and by the dim dread filling it--certainly would have crowded those black depths with grisly phantoms until I very well might have gone mad. And so, as I say, I cast about the deck of the brig for some nook that would shelter me from the dampness while I did my best to sleep away into forgetfulness my hunger and my thirst; but was troubled all the while that I was making my round of investigation by a haunting feeling that I had been on that same deck only a little while before. Growing stronger and stronger, this feeling became so insistent that I could not rest for it; and presently compelled me to try to quiet it by taking a look at the wreck next beyond the brig to see if I recognized that too--as would be likely, since I must have crossed it also, had I really come that way.