About midday
`` When you ca n't fight it 's no good pretending you can , and this old hooker ca n't do more than seven knots , and not often that . We 've been last dog all the way round . The frigates used to pepper us till they got tired of it ; '' and he went out , and I knew what his advice would be if he should be asked for it . About midday I felt so much myself again -- until I got onto my feet , when I learned what forty-eight hours starving on a spar can take out of a man -- that I got up and dressed myself , by degrees , in some things I found waiting for me in one of the other bunks . I hauled myself along a passage till I came to a gangway down which the sweet salt air poured like new life , and the first big breath of it set my head spinning again for a moment . I was hanging on to the handrail when a man came tumbling down in haste . `` It 's you , '' he cried , at sight of me .