That Tourville would not be satisfied with anything short of taking my life, I was convinced; and very soon I began to feel that I did not care how soon he sated his vengeance; for confined below in the heat and darkness of the stifling hold, with no resting-place but the hard shingle for my aching body, breathing an atmosphere poisonous with the odour of bilge-water, with only three flinty ship-biscuits, alive with weevils, and a half-pint of putrid water per day upon which to sustain life, and beset by ferocious rats who disputed with me the possession of my scanty fare, I soon became so miserably ill that death quickly lost all its terrors, and I felt that I could welcome it as a release from my sufferings.
