My reason told me that I should do well to drown as quickly as possible, and I thought to myself that I would not try to swim, but would sink at once.  Yet love of life was too strong for me, and so soon as I touched the water, I struck out and began to swim along the side of the ship, keeping myself in her shadow, for I feared lest de Garcia should cause me to be shot at with arrows and musket balls.  Presently as I went I heard him say with an oath: 

’He has gone, and for good this time, but my foreboding went near to coming true after all.  Bah! how the sight of that man frightens me.’

Now I knew in my heart that I was doing a mad thing, for though if no shark took me, I might float for six or eight hours in this warm water yet I must sink at last, and what would my struggle have profited me?  Still I swam on slowly, and after the filth and stench of the slave hold, the touch of the clean water and the breath of the pure air were like food and wine to me, and I felt strength enter into me as I went.  By this time I was a hundred yards or more from the ship, and though those on board could scarcely have seen me, I could still hear the splash of the bodies, as the slaves were flung from her, and the drowning cries of such among them as still lived.

I lifted my head and looked round the waste of water, and seeing something floating on it at a distance, I swam towards it, expecting that every moment would be my last, because of the sharks which abound in these seas.  Soon I was near it, and to my joy I perceived that it was a large barrel, which had been thrown from the ship, and was floating upright in the water.  I reached it, and pushing at it from below, contrived to tilt it so that I caught its upper edge with my hand.  Then I saw that it was half full of meal cakes, and that it had been cast away because the meal was stinking.  It was the weight of these rotten cakes acting as ballast, that caused the tub to float upright in the water.  Now I bethought me, that if I could get into this barrel I should be safe from the sharks for a while, but how to do it I did not know.

While I wondered, chancing to glance behind me, I saw the fin of a shark standing above the water not twenty paces away, and advancing rapidly towards me.  Then terror seized me and gave me strength and the wit of despair.  Pulling down the edge of the barrel till the water began to pour into it, I seized it on either side with my hands, and lifting my weight upon them, I doubled my knees.  To this hour I cannot tell how I accomplished it, but the next second I was in the cask, with no other hurt than a scraped shin.  But though I had found a boat, the boat itself was like to sink, for what with my weight and that of the rotten meal, and of the water which had poured over the rim, the edge of the barrel was not now an inch above the level of the sea, and I knew that did another bucketful come aboard, it would no longer bear me.  At that moment also I saw the fin of the shark within four yards, and then felt the barrel shake as the fish struck it with his nose.