In the meantime, one of our casks of water had been exhausted, and my father said: "We will fill it again." But, to our dismay, we found the water was now as salt as in the region of the Lofoden Islands off the coast of Norway.

This necessitated our being extremely careful of the remaining cask.
I found myself wanting to sleep much of the time; whether it was the effect of the exciting experience of sailing in unknown waters, or the relaxation from the awful excitement incident to our adventure in a storm at sea, or due to want of food, I could not say.
I frequently lay down on the bunker of our little sloop, and looked far up into the blue dome of the sky; and, notwithstanding the sun was shining far away in the east, I always saw a single star overhead.

For several days, when I looked for this star, it was always there directly above us.
It was now, according to our reckoning, about the first of August.

The sun was high in the heavens, and was so bright that I could no longer see the one lone star that attracted my attention a few days earlier.
One day about this time, my father startled me by calling my attention to a novel sight far in front of us, almost at the horizon.

"It is a mock sun," exclaimed my father.