We made the best of it, and passed the night on
board. I slept in one of the only two berths in the vessel- and the
berths of a sloop of sixty or twenty tons need scarcely be
described. That which I occupied had no bedding of any kind. Its
extreme width was eighteen inches. The distance of its bottom from the
deck overhead was precisely the same. I found it a matter of exceeding
difficulty to squeeze myself in. Nevertheless, I slept soundly, and
the whole of my vision- for it was no dream, and no nightmare- arose
naturally from the circumstances of my position- from my ordinary bias
of thought- and from the difficulty, to which I have alluded, of
collecting my senses, and especially of regaining my memory, for a
long time after awaking from slumber. The men who shook me were the
crew of the sloop, and some laborers engaged to unload it. From the
load itself came the earthly smell. The bandage about the jaws was a
silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my head, in default of my
customary nightcap.
The tortures endured, however, were indubitably quite equal for
the time, to those of actual sepulture.
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