Saving the occasional lifting of the hatch at long intervals when a man went below into the fore-peak to shovel coals and send them up in buckets, nothing broke the overwhelming monotony of that black and silent time of concealment. But there came an hour, whether it was in the day or night I cannot tell, when I was awakened out of a deep sleep by many violent noises and a wild movement. The ship was at sea; she was breasting the waters of the Channel; and seemingly a strong sea was running, for she pitched deep and raised a most extraordinary roaring noise of foaming brine all about her bows, in the very ‘eyes’ of which I lay. For some minutes I was not sensible of the least inconvenience; I sat up in my bed of sail wondering at the novelty of the motion and the noises; but then I was visited by a most deadly nausea--I felt as though I were swooning into death; indeed, the pitching motion was outrageously heavy for one inexperienced as I was to waken up to. I was just in that part of the ship where the pitching is most felt. I sank back and suffered--oh, how I suffered! Think of me, alone in that midnight blackness, without a sup of cordial to give me a little life, as incapable of stirring as though I were dying, feeling to the height of its anguish the sickness that is the worst of all sickness, hearing nothing but the cataractal rushing of water against the bows, the sudden shock and thunder of a great sea smiting quick and hard as the blow of a rock, the crazy straining of timber and cargo and strong fastenings. In this wretched state I continued for two days. I afterwards calculated this time, and found that it must have run into two days and a night. I never ate nor drank; I may say I neither slept nor waked; I lay in a sort of middle state. Will never came near me; but through no fault of his; he later on told me his hands had been full whilst on deck, he could not invent an excuse to visit the store-room, and without a good excuse he durst not lift the hatch lest I should be discovered and he be charged with hiding me. However, whether it was that nature could suffer no more, or that the movement of the ship even in this extreme fore part had fallen into softness and rhythm, I slept and awoke, and, awaking, found myself free from nausea and hungry. I sat up and lighted a candle; my hand shook with weakness, and I could scarcely stand. I drank from a bottle of water, took such food as I wanted, and made a meal. I kept the candle burning, for I was now thinking that my term of imprisonment might be drawing to an end, and that I could afford the luxury of a light. Indeed, I had not as yet consumed a whole candle since I had been in hiding.