Often--oh! often--I reflected with a shudder what my fate would have been had the ship gone down in deep water, leaving me safe, but deprived of all the stores she contained.

The long, lingering agony, the starvation, the madness of thirst, and finally a horrible death on that far-away strip of sand, and another skeleton added to that grisly pile! The days passed slowly by.

In what part of the world I was located I had not the remotest idea.

I felt that I was altogether out of the beaten track of ships because of the reefs that studded these seas, and therefore the prospect of my being rescued was very remote indeed--a thought that often caused me a kind of dull agony, more terrible than any mere physical pain.
However, I fixed up a flagstaff on the highest point of the island--( poor "island,"-- _that_ was not many inches)--and floated an ensign _upside down_ from it, in the hope that this signal of distress might be sighted by some stray vessel, and indicate the presence of a castaway to those on board.

Every morning I made my way to the flagstaff, and scanned the horizon for a possible sail, but I always had to come away disappointed.
This became a habit; yet, so eternal is hope, that day by day, week by week, and month by month the bitter disappointment was always a keen torture.