"It seemed as if the squall would never end. The gale rushed at him for hours, a veritable hurricane of wind, accompanied by a deluge of warm rain. He was badly frightened, not so much for his physical safety as on account of his imagination. He says that during those long hours of tumult and darkness, a premonition of doom became as real to his fancy as if an actual spirit, an embodiment of disaster, had settled down out of the night to keep him company. He didn’t feel alone—fate sailed with him. "In the morning, the island had, of course, disappeared. The squall had at length passed over; the sea grew calm, and the hot sun burned down on the water. It remained calm all day, so that he couldn’t use the sail. He rowed the heavy boat until his hands could barely touch the oars, steering as best he knew how by the sun. He had no compass, and his idea of the direction of the island was vague; the squall, he thought, had struck him from about E.S.E., but he couldn’t be certain. It might have veered a point or two in the night, blowing him off at a new angle. And what did it matter?—for he couldn’t pick out the points of the compass with the wind gone and the sun directly overhead. A horrible fear oppressed him that with all his frantic pulling he was shaping a course past the island. But which side—which side? As the day wore on, with no land appearing, this fear became a certainty. "The second night was terrible; he had begun to comprehend the immensity of the ocean. He was lost on the Pacific. Nothing but a miracle of miracles would lead him back to the island. In his mind’s eyes he saw a chart of the region; a dot marked the island, a smaller dot his present position—the rest was a waste of waters. Thousands of lines radiated from the smaller dot; these were the possible directions in which he might steer. Only three or four of them approached the island; the rest led nowhere. "He remembered that he was far from the track of vessels. Not that he wanted to return to the world, but a vessel might help him to find the island. He was too full of life to want to die.... Scenes of the island crossed his mind with poignant intensity. They would be searching for him in their frail dug-out canoes. The women would be wailing behind the village. Would his love believe that he had left her? No, he felt her faith, across the silence. In fancy, he saw her standing at the head of the beach, where she had first appeared to him. But her face now was drawn in wild sorrow, her streaming eyes ranged the horizon as if she would pierce the veil of death. He cried out to her; but the vast cavern of the sky swallowed his words.