“Ah, what a day of agony that was! My heart was almost bursting. My comrades kindled a fire on one of the peaks. Night came on, but no signal came from the yacht. Deliverance was there, however. Were we to see it vanish from our eyes?
“I hesitated no longer. The darkness was growing deeper. The ship might double the island during the night. I jumped into the sea, and attempted to make my way toward it. Hope trebled my strength, I cleft the waves with superhuman vigor, and had got so near the yacht that I was scarcely thirty fathoms off, when it tacked about.
“This provoked me to the despairing cry, which only my two children heard. It was no illusion.
“Then I came back to the shore, exhausted and overcome with emotion and fatigue. My two sailors received me half dead. It was a horrible
