It is a proof of the waywardness of human nature that we bear great misfortunes better than small ones.  So it proved with Mark, on this occasion; for, much as he really regarded Bob, and serious as was the loss of his friend to himself, the effects of the inundation occupied his thoughts, and disturbed him more, just at that time, than the disappearance of the Neshamony.  Nevertheless, our young man had not forgotten to look out for the missing boat, in readiness to hail its return with joy.  He passed much of the week he was shut up in the ship in her topmast-cross-trees, vainly examining the sea to leeward, in the hope of catching a distant view of the pinnace endeavouring to bear up through the reefs.  Several times he actually fancied he saw her; but it always turned out to be the wing of some gull, or the cap of a distant breaker.  It was when Mark had come ashore again, and commenced the toil of covering the decayed fish, and of gathering them into piles, that these smaller matters supplanted the deep griefs of his solitude.

One of the annoyances to which our solitary man found himself most subject, was the glare produced by a burning sun on rocks and ashes of the drab colour of the crater.  The spots of verdure that he had succeeded in producing on the Summit, not only relieved and refreshed his eyes, but they were truly delightful as aids to the view, as well as grateful to Kitty, which poor creature had, by this time, cropped them down to a pretty short herbage.  This Mark knew, however, was an advantage to the grass, making it finer, and causing it to thicken at the roots.  The success of this experiment, the annoyance to his eyes, and a feverish desire to be doing, which succeeded the disappearance of Botts, set Mark upon the project of sowing grass-seed over as much of the plain of the crater as he thought he should not have occasion to use for the purposes of tillage.  To work he went then, scattering the seed in as much profusion as the quantity to be found in the ship would justify.  Friend Abraham White had provided two barrels of the seed, and this went a good way.  While thus employed a heavy shower fell, and thinking the rain a most favourable time to commit his grass-seeds to the earth, Mark worked through the whole of it, or for several hours, perspiring with the warmth and exercise.

This done, a look at the garden, with a free use of the hoe, was the next thing undertaken.  That night Mark slept in his hammock, under the crater-awning, and when he awoke in the morning it was to experience a weight, like that of lead in his forehead, a raging thirst, and a burning fever.  Now it was that our poor solitary hermit felt the magnitude of his imprudence and the weight of the evils of his peculiar situation.  That he was about to be seriously ill he knew, and it behoved him to improve the time that remained to him, to the utmost.  Everything useful to him was in the ship, and thither it became indispensable