My hand now trembled as I worked. My heart beat loudly against my ribs. It was a moment of vivid emotion. A fearful thought was in my mind--a dread doubt was troubling me--a doubt that it was _water_! This doubt had occurred to me at an earlier period, but at no time did I feel it so intensely as at that moment, just upon the eve of its solution. Oh, heaven! should it not be water after all--should the contents of the cask prove to be rum or brandy, or even wine! I knew that none of these would avail to quench my burning thirst. For the moment they might, but only for the moment; it would return fiercer and more craving than ever. Oh! if it should be one, or any of them, then indeed was I lost--then indeed might I yield up my last hope, and die as men have often died, under the madness of intoxication! I was close to the inner surface of the stave; moisture was already oozing through the wood, where it had been penetrated by the point of the blade. I hesitated to make the last cut; I dreaded the result. I hesitated but a short while. The torture of my thirst impelled me on; and plunging the blade deeply, I felt the last fibres yielding to its point. Almost at the same instant a cold spray rushed out, sprinkling my hand upon the haft, and rushing far up my sleeve. After giving the blade a twist, I drew it out, and then a jet shot forth, as if forced from a syringe. In another instant my lips covered the vent, and I drank delicious draughts--not of spirits, not of wine-- but of water, cold and sweet as though it issued from a rock of limestone! CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE. THE VENT-PEG. Oh! how I drank of that delicious water! I thought I should never be satisfied; but at length satiety was produced, and I thirsted no more. The effect was not immediate--the first long draught did not relieve me, or only for a time. I longed again, and again placed my lips to the spouting stream; and this I did repeatedly, until the longing returned not, and the pangs of thirst were forgotten as if I had never felt them! It is beyond the power of the imagination to form any idea of the agony of thirst--mere fancy cannot realise it. It must be experienced to be known, but a proof of its intensity might be given by adducing the horrible alternatives to which men have resorted when reduced to the extremity of this torturing pain. And yet, withal, as soon as the craving is appeased, so soon as a sufficient quantity of water has passed the lips, the pain exists no more, but ends with the suddenness of a dream! No other bodily ill can be so quickly healed.