As I watched his doings, he gave me a ray of hope. He lifted a bottle to his mouth, and he did not tilt it high. How fervently I hoped that he had enough to get drunk on! His next move showed he was not by any means drunk at present. He walked away from the fire, often stopping down, as I supposed, to pick up stones. He evidently meant to spare powder and shot as long as he could, and to do his work as silently as possible. When he came back to the fire, he lighted a torch and descended the embankment, looking carefully, at the soil of the fen, as if he sought to get nearer to the boat, but he had too much prudence to venture. Then he ascended the bank and resumed his sling. He had found where the boat lay, for he managed to hit about once in three times. His aim was so bad that it would have been laughable under other circumstances, but I had no inclination to laugh, as plank after plank cracked and started. I turned over, and lay with my back to him, grinding my teeth with rage to be so ignominiously stoned and so utterly helpless. At length, perhaps after an hour of continuous firing, came a pause, and I turned over to look at my enemy. It was only too easy to see him through gaping seams and holes broken in the planking. He sat between the fire and me, so that his every movement was clearly discernible. If I had had a gun I could have shot him wherever I chose. He rubbed his right shoulder with his left hand, as if it ached with his exercise. Then he drank from his bottle, tilting it higher this time. He sat so long that I began to hope he imagined he had made an end of me; but by-and-by he rose to his feet, took his gun in hand, and prepared to fire. I rolled to the very edge of the gunnel now, and the water and ooze flowed softly in on me. It was well I did, for Vliet's aim with a gun was another matter than his aim with a sling. Shot after shot struck and riddled the heap of boards which had been a boat, but as by a miracle, shot after shot missed me. Vliet plainly believed that there could be no one in the wreck except a dead man, for he began to sing. Never have I listened to music, even the best, with more pleasure than I had in hearing that thick and drunken voice yelling a tuneless song! I watched him finish his bottle, scatter the fire, and heard by the diminishing noise that he was going back to Sandtoft.