After resting a few minutes, the solitary invalid formed a new plan of proceeding.  He knew the importance of not over-exerting himself, but he also knew the importance of cleanliness and of a renovation of his strength.  By this time the biscuit had got to be softened in the wine and water, and he took a piece, and after masticating it well, swallowed it.  This was positively the first food the sick and desolate young man had received in a week.  Fully aware of this, he abstained from taking a second mouthful, though sorely pressed to it by hunger.  So strong was the temptation, and so sweet did that morse taste, that Mark felt he might not refrain unless he had something to occupy his mind for a few minutes.  Taking a small swallow of the wine and water, he again got on his feet, and staggered to the drawer in which poor Captain Crutchely had kept his linen.  Here he got a shirt, and tottered on as far as the quarter-deck.  Beneath the awning Mark had kept the section of a hogshead, as a bathing-tub, and for the purpose of catching the rain-water that ran from the awning, Kitty often visiting the ship and drinking from this reservoir.

The invalid found the tub full of fresh and sweet water, and throwing aside the shirt in which he had lain so long, he rather fell than seated himself in the water.  After remaining a sufficient, time to recover his breath, Mark washed his head, and long matted beard, and all parts of his frame, as well as his strength would allow.  He must have remained in the water several minutes, when he managed to tear himself from it, as fearful of excess from this indulgence as from eating.  The invalid now felt like a new man!  It is scarcely possible to express the change that came over his feelings, when he found himself purified from the effects of so long a confinement in a feverish bed, without change, or nursing of any sort.  After drying himself as well as he could with a towel, though the breeze and the climate did that office for him pretty effectually, Mark put on the clean, fresh shirt, and tottered back to his own berth, where he fell on the mattress, nearly exhausted.  It was half-an-hour before he moved again, though all that time experiencing the benefits of the nourishment taken, and the purification undergone.  The bath, moreover, had acted as a tonic, giving a stimulus to the whole system.  At the end^of the half hour, the young man took another mouthful of the biscuit, half emptied the tumbler, fell back on his pillow, and was soon in a sweet sleep.

It was near sunset when Mark lost his consciousness on this occasion, nor did he recover it until the light of day was once more cheering the cabin.  He had slept profoundly twelve hours, and this so much the more readily from the circumstance that he had previously refreshed himself with a bath and clean linen.  The first consciousness of his situation was accompanied with the bleat of poor Kitty.  That gentle animal, intended by nature to mix with