But no Yellow Handkerchief appeared. He had given me up and gone back to
Point Pedro. Nevertheless, I was in a deplorable, not to say a
dangerous, condition. I could not stand upon my feet, much less walk. My
clammy, muddy garments clung to me like sheets of ice. I thought I
should never get them off. So numb and lifeless were my fingers, and so
weak was I that it seemed to take an hour to get off my shoes. I had not
the strength to break the porpoise-hide laces, and the knots defied me.
I repeatedly beat my hands upon the rocks to get some sort of life into
them. Sometimes I felt sure I was going to die.
But in the end,--after several centuries, it seemed to me,--I got off
the last of my clothes. The water was now close at hand, and I crawled
painfully into it and washed the mud from my naked body. Still, I could
not get on my feet and walk and I was afraid to lie still. Nothing
remained but to crawl weakly, like a snail, and at the cost of constant
pain, up and down the sand. I kept this up as long as possible, but as
the east paled with the coming of dawn I began to succumb. The sky grew
rosy-red, and the golden rim of the sun, showing above the horizon,
found me lying helpless and motionless among the clam-shells.
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