I estimated, from the height of the sun above the horizon, that it was about nine o'clock in the morning when I fairly started upon my shoreward voyage, and the exasperating slowness with which I drew away from the rest of the wreckage caused me to put my speed through the water at not more than a mile an hour at the utmost, while the grey misty appearance of the land for which I was making convinced me that it must be at least twenty miles distant; I had, therefore, something like another twenty-four hours of continuous laborious paddling before me before I might once more hope to feel the solid earth beneath my feet, and find something--were it no more than a little wild fruit--wherewith to stay my hunger.  But this was not all: the skin of my hands had become so exceedingly soft and tender through long immersion in the water that the sharp edges of the board which I was using as a paddle quickly caused them to blister, and although I paused long enough in my labours to enable me to trim those sharp edges away with my knife, and to work the board into somewhat more convenient shape, the blistering process continued until within about an hour my palms were quite raw, and smarting most atrociously from the salt in the water.  Moreover, I had lost my hat, and the sun struck down so fiercely upon my unprotected head that I was soon nearly delirious with headache and the throbbing of my old wound, received in the attack upon the pirate brigantine on the Costa Firme.  Still, headache or no headache, blisters or no blisters, there was the land, yet a long distance off, and it had to be reached before my strength gave out, or my life would pay the forfeit; so I set my teeth and paddled doggedly on, hour after hour, my hunger ever growing keener, while now I began to experience in addition the torments of thirst, my whole body became racked with aches and pains as though I had been unmercifully bruised and beaten, my head throbbed until it seemed as if it would burst open, and, as for my hands, they at length felt as though the rough paddle were white-hot iron; I had certainly never in all my life before experienced such a complication of agonising pains.  And, despite it all, the land seemed to draw never an inch nearer.