CHAPTER 5.
FOR some minutes after the cook had left the forecastle, Augustus abandoned himself to despair, never hoping to leave the berth alive.
He now came to the resolution of acquainting the first of the men who should come down with my situation, thinking it better to let me take my chance with the mutineers than perish of thirst in the hold,--for it had been ten days since I was first imprisoned, and my jug of water was not a plentiful supply even for four.

As he was thinking on this subject, the idea came all at once into his head that it might be possible to communicate with me by the way of the main hold.

In any other circumstances, the difficulty and hazard of the undertaking would have prevented him from attempting it; but now he had, at all events, little prospect of life, and consequently little to lose, he bent his whole mind, therefore, upon the task.
His handcuffs were the first consideration.

At first he saw no method of removing them, and feared that he should thus be baffled in the very outset; but upon a closer scrutiny he discovered that the irons could be slipped off and on at pleasure, with very little effort or inconvenience, merely by squeezing his hands through them,--this species of manacle being altogether ineffectual in confining young persons, in whom the smaller bones readily yield to pressure.

He now untied his feet, and, leaving the cord in such a manner that it could easily be readjusted in the event of any person's coming down, proceeded to examine the bulkhead where it joined the berth.