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Updated: May 28, 2025
I had experienced already what a misfortune it would be, since, but for the lucky circumstance of the brandy-cask, the plan I was now about to attempt would have been altogether impracticable. Linen I dreaded more than any other material. It would be more difficult to get through, and when removed from its close-pressed bales, could not possibly be repacked in so small a space.
Now, more than ever, did I value this precious weapon; for I was fully sensible that my life depended on its endurance. "If I only had a piece of some hard wood!" thought I. I remembered that in making an entrance into the brandy-cask I had cut large pieces from the oaken staves. Perhaps one of these would do? With the thought, I hurried back to the little chamber where I knew they were lying.
Through this last half I resolved to cut my way, and then, creeping inside the cask, to make another hole that would let me through its opposite side. Perhaps, beyond the brandy-cask I might find food and safety? It was only blind guessing on my part; but I again prayed for success.
For all that, it caused me a good deal of disappointment, when, on getting the point of my blade through to the inside, I discovered that the stream that came jetting out was not water but pure brandy, which proved that it was a brandy-cask I had tapped.
Although they were of no service to me just then, I could not permit them to be eaten up in this way; and, raising myself once more, I made a dash to catch the mouse. In this I was unsuccessful. I did not even touch the animal; but I thought I heard it scampering through the crevice that led out between the brandy-cask and the timbers of the ship.
In fact, there was just room enough for my body and the bag of crumbs so that it was more like a nest than an apartment. With the pieces of cloth piled in one end against the brandy-cask, I was well defended in that quarter, and it only remained to close up the other end as I had done before.
The idea that I was in any danger of losing my life quite forsook me, and all the hardships through which I had been passing appeared to have been only imaginary a chimera of my brain, or, at most, only a dream. Just then I was seized with a terrible fit of thirst, and I remember making a struggle to get out of the brandy-cask for the purpose of having a drink from the water-butt.
And thereupon he sat down across the brandy-cask, and began to fill a pipe. "Give me the loan of a link, Dick," said he; and then, when he had a good light, "That'll do, my lad," he added, "stick the glim in the wood heap; and you, gentlemen, bring yourselves to! you needn't stand up for Mr. Hawkins; he'll excuse you, you may lay to that.
I experienced the same difficulty as before, in detaching the pieces of cloth from one another, and drawing them forth from their tightly-fitting places. How-ever, I succeeded in getting them clear; and then taking them, one at a time, I carried, or rather pushed them before me, until I had got them to the very farthest corner of my quarters, by the end of the old brandy-cask.
At this moment the door was thrown open; a drunken workman reeled past him, an obnoxious odor issued forth. Louder still grew the noise; the tones of the flute could scarcely make themselves heard above it. Then he took courage, and before the door was closed pressed through the narrow opening into the inner room of the public-house. He stood there, squeezed behind an empty brandy-cask.
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