He prayed for a while and then tried to sleep, but he couldn't sleep.
The day was long. He was hungry, but so thirsty that he forgot his hunger. He didn't move about much. He soon came to see that the sun was going to prove perhaps his worst enemy here. He decided to try to sleep as much as possible in the daytime, prowling at night.
Since there was no scrap of shade, he was hot; and after a while, too, he was dizzy and felt sick to his stomach, which was not usual with him. He took off his clothes and waded into the water, hoping to soak some of it through his skin, at the same time cooling himself.
This gave him no relief; and indeed it made matters worse, for when the salt water dried, it left his skin itchy, so that he was forever twisting this way and that, and scratching himself.
To get his mind on something else he took to making a search for the hardest, most-nearly-flint stone available, and when he'd found one he squatted in the middle of the island, a fluffy pile of shirt threads before him, and chipped with the belt buckle.
Three times he got a small faint spick of a spark, but he could not ignite the threads. By using a page of the Book he might have been able to do this, but fire didn't mean that much to him. He wondered, truly, why he thought of fire at all. He was far from any sailing route and it could well be that the only persons who even knew of the existence of this island were the Providence pirates. They wouldn't rescue him unless either there was a revolution among them, in which victory went to the party headed by Adam's friends, or else Everard van Bramm, whether because of pressure or some bribe, officially called off the punishment. This latter possibility Adam considered even slighter than the former.
But there was perhaps a thousand-in-one chance of some lost sail stumbling within sight of this island, and if this should happen Adam wanted to be ready with a signal.
He worked for a long while, slowly, steadily, with vast patience, but without success. His hands became slippery with sweat.
He regarded the belt buckle. "You'd cut your wrists inside two days, we left you a knife," they had told him. But they hadn't noticed this buckle. The brass tongue, plunged into the neck at the proper place, could no doubt bring about a quick and comparatively painless death, albeit a messy one. But Adam did not consider that, either. He could see no profit in quitting before your time was up. And though he knew what some men said, Adam himself had always esteemed suicide a sin. God gave you your life and only God should take it away.
It was no use trying to sleep. He'd scratch. He'd twist.
If there's dew at sunup, he thought, d'ye suppose I could go around and lick it from the stones? D'ye suppose I could get some moisture that way?
"I doubt it," he answered himself aloud. "I'm not likely to be still alive by that time anyway."
His hunger, too, was a terrible thing. Once again he sloshed through the shallows, turning over stones, sticking his fingers everywhere, in search of any sort of edible matter, but found nothing. On dragging feet he returned to the middle of the island, and there he tried to eat some of the seaweed, first dry, then moistened a bit. He couldn't do it, couldn't even swallow the stuff, which caught angrily in his throat, while his mouth and nose were crammed with the sour smell of it, which clogged these like a noxious gas. He must have all but stifled himself to death, suffocated himself, in his efforts to swallow that seaweed; and at last he fell to hands and knees, shaking his head, retching—retching—while his body was racked with sobs.
"A fine way to go and meet your Creator," he told himself after a while, and he forced himself to get up and make one more trip around the island.
He was glad when the sun went down. He reckoned that this would be the last time he'd watch that happen, but he was glad all the same, for the sun had been merciless.
He went back to the center of the island, to that pathetic little well that contained the threads from his shirt, the least-soft stones, the belt buckle. He lay down.
It must be that he slept, after all; for when he was stung in the palm of an outflung hand he sat up suddenly, blinlcing, bewildered. It burned. But what could sting him here? What animals, what insects could there be?
He must seek them out. There might be a smitch of wetness in each. He must somehow catch them.
Then he was stung again in the same hand, and immediately afterward on his forehead, and on his chin. The truth came: It was raining.
He sprang to his feet, flinging off his clothes. All around him beautiful luscious large wet drops of water were biffing the sand and rubble—and were instantly lost. He spread his clothes out so that no part of one article would overlap the other, and then threw himself on the ground, where he lay now on his back, now on his belly, but always, in moving, rolling to a fresh spot, so that he could squeeze the under side of his body as close as possible to whatever moisture the earth might have soaked up, while the upper side was being doused from above. He laughed and wept at the same time.
It was no more than a shower but it was a heavy one. Twice Adam wrung his clothes out above his gaping mouth; yet when the rain ceased they were blessedly soaked once more.
He rose. He felt wonderful, and was even singing.
He had been a fool for fussing with the possibilities of fire while ignoring the chance of rain. What he should have done was collect every shell and even every flat stone with any sort of concave surface, and have these ready, tilted toward Heaven, waiting. He would do this now. There still was precious water in his clothes, water that should be stored away before the sun rose.
The shower had scrubbed the sky but there was no moon, only star-shine. Nevertheless Adam Long searched every square inch of that island, moving on hands and knees. He gathered more than thirty shells, a few of them little bigger than thimbles. He placed them in a series of circles around his "fireplace" in the middle of the island, where the boldest encroaching wave couldn't reach them.
By this time the sun was up, and he knew that his treasure would not keep unless it was somehow shaded. He squeezed the clothes out for the third time, catching the water, treating each pear-shaped prize with a solicitude virtually sacerdotal.
Afterward he put the damp clothes on, except his undershirt, and they felt good against his no-longer-itchy skin: they even stirred him to shiver a bit, at first.
He fetched a great deal of seaweed, which he laid out to dry. He uprooted more grass. Weaving now one of these materials and now the other, and sometimes the two together, he experimented with thatch. His undershirt was spread over the thickest of the muddle of shells-with-water, but it was by no means large enough, and anyway he sought a substitute, an alternate, for he told himself that no good mariner would set forth without at least one spare suit of sails.
His fingers soon were slippery with sweat, his back ached, and he was dizzy, swaying where he sat, sometimes missing a stroke entirely: he seemed to have lost all sense of distance. His stomach hurt, too, though surely there was nothing left in it either to bring up or to pass off.
After a while his hands began to shake, and he couldn't even see what he was working on. He put the flimsy thing down, and opened and shut his hands very hard several times. It did no good. Mumbling like a pig, sometimes sobbing a mite, he covered the filled shells. He remembered doing that. Afterward he must have collapsed: he must have toppled over like a drunkard, to lie still.
When he woke it was dark, and he was in the same place, probably in the same position, excruciatingly stiff, and even more hungry and thirsty than before.