I then
      supposed him hungry, and gave him a large piece of ham, which he
      devoured with avidity—afterward, however, resuming his
      extraordinary manoeuvres. I now imagined that he was suffering,
      like myself, the torments of thirst, and was about adopting this
      conclusion as the true one, when the idea occurred to me that I
      had as yet only examined his paws, and that there might possibly
      be a wound upon some portion of his body or head. The latter I
      felt carefully over, but found nothing. On passing my hand,
      however, along his back, I perceived a slight erection of the
      hair extending completely across it. Probing this with my finger,
      I discovered a string, and tracing it up, found that it encircled
      the whole body. Upon a closer scrutiny, I came across a small
      slip of what had the feeling of letter paper, through which the
      string had been fastened in such a manner as to bring it
      immediately beneath the left shoulder of the animal. CHAPTER 3


      The thought instantly occurred to me that the paper was a note
      from Augustus, and that some unaccountable accident having
      happened to prevent his relieving me from my dungeon, he had
      devised this method of acquainting me with the true state of
      affairs. Trembling with eagerness, I now commenced another search
      for my phosphorus matches and tapers. I had a confused
      recollection of having put them carefully away just before
      falling asleep; and, indeed, previously to my last journey to the
      trap, I had been able to remember the exact spot where I had
      deposited them. But now I endeavored in vain to call it to mind,
      and busied myself for a full hour in a fruitless and vexatious
      search for the missing articles; never, surely, was there a more
      tantalizing state of anxiety and suspense. At length, while
      groping about, with my head close to the ballast, near the
      opening of the box, and outside of it, I perceived a faint
      glimmering of light in the direction of the steerage. Greatly
      surprised, I endeavored to make my way toward it, as it appeared
      to be but a few feet from my position. Scarcely had I moved with
      this intention, when I lost sight of the glimmer entirely, and,
      before I could bring it into view again, was obliged to feel
      along by the box until I had exactly resumed my original
      situation. Now, moving my head with caution to and fro, I found
      that, by proceeding slowly, with great care, in an opposite
      direction to that in which I had at first started, I was enabled
      to draw near the light, still keeping it in view. Presently I
      came directly upon it (having squeezed my way through innumerable
      narrow windings), and found that it proceeded from some fragments
      of my matches lying in an empty barrel turned upon its side. I
      was wondering how they came in such a place, when my hand fell
      upon two or three pieces of taper wax, which had been evidently
      mumbled by the dog. I concluded at once that he had devoured the
      whole of my supply of candles, and I felt hopeless of being ever
      able to read the note of Augustus. The small remnants of the wax
      were so mashed up among other rubbish in the barrel, that I
      despaired of deriving any service from them, and left them as
      they were. The phosphorus, of which there was only a speck or
      two, I gathered up as well as I could, and returned with it,
      after much difficulty, to my box, where Tiger had all the while
      remained. What to do next I could not tell. The hold was so intensely dark
      that I could not see my hand, however close I would hold it to my
      face. The white slip of paper could barely be discerned, and not
      even that when I looked at it directly; by turning the exterior
      portions of the retina toward it—that is to say, by surveying it
      slightly askance, I found that it became in some measure
      perceptible. Thus the gloom of my prison may be imagined, and the
      note of my friend, if indeed it were a note from him, seemed only
      likely to throw me into further trouble, by disquieting to no
      purpose my already enfeebled and agitated mind. In vain I
      revolved in my brain a multitude of absurd expedients for
      procuring light—such expedients precisely as a man in the
      perturbed sleep occasioned by opium would be apt to fall upon for
      a similar purpose—each and all of which appear by turns to the
      dreamer the most reasonable and the most preposterous of
      conceptions, just as the reasoning or imaginative faculties
      flicker, alternately, one above the other. At last an idea
      occurred to me which seemed rational, and which gave me cause to
      wonder, very justly, that I had not entertained it before. I
      placed the slip of paper on the back of a book, and, collecting
      the fragments of the phosphorus matches which I had brought from
      the barrel, laid them together upon the paper. I then, with the
      palm of my hand, rubbed the whole over quickly, yet steadily. A
      clear light diffused itself immediately throughout the whole
      surface; and had there been any writing upon it, I should not
      have experienced the least difficulty, I am sure, in reading it. Not a syllable was there, however—nothing but a dreary and
      unsatisfactory blank; the illumination died away in a few
      seconds, and my heart died away within me as it went. I have before stated more than once that my intellect, for some
      period prior to this, had been in a condition nearly bordering on
      idiocy. There were, to be sure, momentary intervals of perfect
      sanity, and, now and then, even of energy; but these were few. It
      must be remembered that I had been, for many days certainly,
      inhaling the almost pestilential atmosphere of a close hold in a
      whaling vessel, and for a long portion of that time but scantily
      supplied with water. For the last fourteen or fifteen hours I had
      none—nor had I slept during that time. Salt provisions of the
      most exciting kind had been my chief, and, indeed, since the loss
      of the mutton, my only supply of food, with the exception of the
      sea-biscuit; and these latter were utterly useless to me, as they
      were too dry and hard to be swallowed in the swollen and parched
      condition of my throat. I was now in a high state of fever, and
      in every respect exceedingly ill. This will account for the fact
      that many miserable hours of despondency elapsed after my last
      adventure with the phosphorus, before the thought suggested
      itself that I had examined only one side of the paper.