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“And now I beg your pardon, sir,” said the narrator, addressing the Shipwreck Clerk, “but I forgot that you said you’d finish this story yourself. Perhaps you’d like to take it up just here?”

The Shipwreck Clerk seemed surprised, and had apparently forgotten his previous offer. “Oh no,” said he, “tell your own story. This is not a matter of business.”

“Very well, then,” said the brother-in-law of J. George Watts, “I’ll go on. We made everything as tight as we could, and then we got our supper, having forgotten all about dinner, and being very hungry. We didn’t make any tea and we didn’t light the lamp, for we knew that would use up air; but we made a better meal than three people sunk out of sight in the ocean had a right to expect. ‘What troubles me most,’ said William Anderson, as he turned in, ‘is the fact that if we are forty feet under water our flagpole must be covered up. Now, if the flag was sticking out, upside down, a ship sailing by would see it and would know there was something wrong.’ ‘If that’s all that troubles you,’ said I, ‘I guess you’ll sleep easy. And if a ship was to see the flag, I wonder how they’d know we were down here, and how they’d get us out if they did!’ ‘Oh, they’d manage it,’ said William Anderson; ‘trust those sea-captains for that.’ And then he went to sleep.

The next morning the air began to get mighty disagreeable in the part of the cabin where we were, and then William Anderson he says, ‘What we’ve got to do is to climb up into the stern state-rooms, where the air is purer. We can come down here to get our meals, and then go up again to breathe comfortable.’ ‘And what are we going to do when the air up there gets foul?’ says I to William, who seemed to be making arrangements for spending the summer in our present quarters. ‘Oh, that’ll be all right,’ said he. ‘It don’t do to be extravagant with air any more than with anything else. When we’ve used up all there is in this cabin, we can bore holes through the floor into the hold and let in air from there. If we’re economical, there’ll be enough to last for dear knows how long.’

We passed the night each in a state-room, sleeping on the end wall instead of the berth, and it wasn’t till the afternoon of the next day that the air of the cabin got so bad we thought we’d have some fresh; so we went down on the bulkhead, and with an auger that we found in the pantry we bored three holes, about a yard apart, in the cabin floor, which was now one of the walls of the room, just as the bulkhead was the floor, and the stern end, where the two round windows were, was the ceiling or roof. We each took a hole, and I tell you it was pleasant to breathe the air which came in from the hold. ‘Isn’t this jolly?’ said William Anderson. ‘And we ought to be mighty glad that that hold wasn’t loaded with codfish or soap. But there’s nothing that smells better than new sewing-machines that haven’t ever been used, and this air is pleasant enough for anybody.’ By William’s advice we made three plugs, by which we stopped up the holes when we thought we’d had air enough for the present. ‘And now,’ says he, ‘we needn’t climb up into those awkward state-rooms any more. We can just stay down here and be comfortable, and let in air when we want it.’ ‘And how long do you suppose that air in the hold is going to last?’ said I. ‘Oh, ever so long,’ said he, ‘using it so economically as we do; and when it stops coming out lively through these little holes, as I suppose it will after a while, we can saw a big hole in this flooring and go into the hold and do our breathing, if we want to.’ That evening we did saw a hole about a foot square, so as to have plenty of air while we were asleep; but we didn’t go into the hold, it being pretty well filled up with machines; though the next day Sam and I sometimes stuck our heads in for a good sniff of air, though William Anderson was opposed to this, being of the opinion that we ought to put ourselves on short rations of breathing so as to make the supply of air hold out as long as possible. ‘But what’s the good,’ said I to William, ‘of trying to make the air hold out if we’ve got to be suffocated in this place after all?’ ‘What’s the good?’ says he. ‘Haven’t you enough biscuits and canned meats and plenty of other things to eat, and a barrel of water in that room opposite the pantry, not to speak of wine and brandy if you want to cheer yourself up a bit, and haven’t we good mattresses to sleep on, and why shouldn’t we try to live and be comfortable as long as we can?’ ‘What I want,’ said I, ‘is to get out of this box.