They
increased until I suffered the most excruciating agony, as if my bones
had been converted into red--hot tubes of iron, and the marrow in them
had been dried up with fervent heat, and I was obliged to beg that a
hammock might be spread on deck, on which I lay down, pleading great
fatigue and want of sleep as my excuse.
My thirst was unquenchable; the more I drank, the hotter it became. My
tongue, and mouth, and throat, were burning, as if molten lead had been
poured down into my stomach, while the most violent retching came on
every ten minutes. The prize crew, poor fellows, did all they could
once or twice they seemed about standing back to the ship, but, "make
sail, make sail," was my only cry. They did so, and there I lay without
any thing between me and the wet planks but a thin sailor's blanket and
the canvass of the hammock, through the livelong night, and with no
covering but a damp boatcloak, raving at times during the hot fits, at
others having my power of utterance frozen up during the cold ones. The
men, once or twice, offered to carry me below, but the idea was horrible
to me.
"No, no--not there--for heaven's sake not there! If you do take me down,
I am sure I shall see him, and the dead mate--No, no overboard rather,
throw me overboard rather."
Oh, what would I not have given for the luxury of a flood of tears!--But
the fountains of mine eyes were dried up, and seared as with a red--hot
iron--my skin was parched, and hot, hot, as if every pore had been
hermetically sealed; there was a hell within me and about me as if the
deck on which I lay had been steel at a white heat, and the gushing
blood, as under the action of a force--pump, throbbed through my head,
like it would have burst on my brain--and such a racking, splitting
headache--no language can describe it, and yet ever and anon in the midst
of this raging fire, this furnace at my heart, seven times heated, a
sudden icy shivering chill would shake me, and pierce through and through
me, even when the roasting fever was at the hottest.
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