I stayed there not a moment longer than I could help, but mounted back to the surface like a duck; and then, rising upon the wave, looked around me. My object in so doing was to get sight of the signal-staff, and with the spray driving in my eyes this was not so easy. Just like a water-dog searching for some object in the water, I had to turn twice or thrice before I saw it; for I was uncertain in which direction to look for it, so completely had the sudden plunge blinded me and blunted my senses. I got my eyes upon it at length; not within reach, as might have been expected; but many yards off, quite twenty, I should think! Wind and tide had been busy with me; and had I left them to themselves for ten minutes more, they would have carried me to a point from which I should never have been able to swim back. As soon as I espied the post I struck directly for it--not indeed that I very clearly knew what I should do when I got there, but urged on with a sort of instinct that something might interfere in my favour. I was acting just as men act when in danger of being drowned. I was catching at straws. I need not say that I was cool: you would not believe me, nor would there be a word of truth in it, for I was far from cool in the moral sense of the word, whatever I might be personally and physically. On the contrary, I was frightened nearly out of my senses; and had just enough left to direct me back to the post, though this might only have been instinct. But no, something more than instinct; for I had at the same time a keen and rational sense of the unpleasant fact, that when I should arrive at the post, I might be not a bit nearer to _safety_. I had no fear about being able to reach the staff. I had confidence enough in my natatory powers to make me easy on that score. It was only when I thought of the little help I should find there, that my apprehensions were keen, and this I was thinking of all the while I was in the water. I could easily have climbed the staff as far as the cask, but no farther. To get to the top was beyond my power; one of those difficulties which even the fear of death cannot overcome. I had tried it till I was tired of trying; in short, till I saw I could not do it. Could I only have accomplished that feat, I might have done so before, for I took it for granted that on that high perch I should have been safe, and the nine-gallon barrel would have been large enough to have given me a seat where I might without difficulty have weathered the storm.