At first I hung out a lantern as a night signal, but on the second night it was broken by the wind, and I could find only one other in good condition. The ship's lights must have been blown away in the storm, together with her boats and much of her rigging. I would not hang out the only lantern left me, for fear it should come to grief, and that I should be left in the dark at night in that great vessel. Had I known that I was on a vessel which had been regularly relegated to the ranks of the forsaken, I should better have appreciated the importance of allowing passing vessels to see that there was a light on board the _Sparhawk_, and, therefore, in all probability a life. As day after day had passed, I had become more and more disheartened. It seemed to me that I was in a part of the great ocean avoided by vessels of every kind, that I was not in the track of anything going anywhere. Every day there seemed to be less and less wind, and when I had been on board a week, the _Sparhawk_ was gently rising and falling on a smooth sea in a dead calm. Hour after hour I swept the horizon with the captain's glass, but only once did I see anything to encourage me. This was what appeared like a long line of black smoke against the distant sky, which might have been left by a passing steamer; but, were this the case, I never saw the steamer. Happily, there were plenty of provisions on board of a plain kind. I found spirits and wine, and even medicines, and in the captain's room there were pipes, tobacco, and some books. This comparative comfort gave me a new and strange kind of despair. I began to fear that I might become contented to live out my life alone in the midst of this lonely ocean. In that case, what sort of a man should I become? It was about 8.30 by the captain's chronometer, when I came on deck on the morning of the 25th of May. I had become a late riser, for what was the good of rising early when there was nothing to rise for? I had scarcely raised my eyes above the rail of the ship when, to my utter amazement, I perceived a vessel not a mile away. The sight was so unexpected, and the surprise was so great, that my heart almost stopped beating as I stood and gazed at her. She was a medium-sized iron steamer, and lay upon the sea in a peculiar fashion, her head being much lower than her stern, the latter elevated so much that I could see part of the blades of her motionless propeller. She presented the appearance of a ship which was just about to plunge, bow foremost, into the depths of the ocean, or which had just risen, stern foremost, from those depths.