Surely, if a _living_ being occupied the raft, he would have seen the ship by this time.

Stay; he moves! No; it must have been imagination.

I fear that he is dead, poor fellow.
Stand by to lower a boat." The lieutenant spoke in a sad voice; for he felt convinced that he had come too late to the aid of some unfortunate who had died in perhaps the most miserable manner in which man can perish.
Henry Stuart did indeed lie on the raft a dead man to all appearance.
Towards the evening of his third day, he had suffered very severely from the pangs of hunger.

Long and earnestly had he gazed round the horizon, but no sail appeared.

He felt that his end was approaching, and, in a fit of despair and increasing weakness, he fell on his face in a state of half-consciousness.