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308 And I struck out vigorously in the opposite direction.

After a day and a half's vigorous swimming, I reached the point of a low sandy shore, which seemed to stretch for miles in a direction due south, as I judged from the position of the sun. I was well satisfied to feel dry ground under my legs again, and I landed with much gratitude.

I was extremely hungry, and I walked for miles along the shore picking up mussels and periwinkles, and eating them raw. I saw no trace of a human being of any kind, and as the sun went down I began to wish myself in the sea again. Night came on and I was hungry and alone. However, I still wandered on in a listless purposeless way until I fell over something that fell across my path. To my intense joy I found, on investigation, that it was a sleeping, breathing human being. I could not tell whether it was a man or a woman, as there was no moon, and the clothes he or she wore would have suited either sex equally well. I endeavoured to awaken the figure, but in vain, so I determined to sit by his or her side until morning. Accordingly I dropped myself into a sitting posture, when, to my extreme amazement, an explosion of fire took place immediately under me! The fearful idea flashed across me that the island was a mass of slumbering fire, only waiting for accidental contact with an exciting cause to blow itself and everything for miles around into the air! On closed examination, however, I found that I had sat down upon a box of vesuvians, and one of them had exploded.

It suddenly occurred to me to use these vesuvians as a means of identifying my companion. I ignited one,