invariably terminated in
one dreadful point, this occupation became hateful. I then endeavoured
to blot the whole transaction from my memory--to persuade myself that
the events had not been real--that I had dreamed them--or read them long
ago in some old book. But the mind is not so easily cheated--remorse
not so soon blinded.

CHAPTER FIFTY TWO.

THE CAPTAIN TAKETH TO TANTRUMS--AND KEEPETH ON BOARD MONKEYS, BEARS, AND
DISCIPLINE--IT IS FEARED, ALSO, THAT THE MOON HATH TOO MUCH TO DO WITH
HIS OBSERVATIONS.

Notwithstanding my misery, I became convalescent. I went to my duty
doggedly. Everybody saw and respected my grief; and the affair was
never mentioned to me by any, with one only exception, and that was six
months after, by a heavy brutal master's-mate, named Pigtop, who had
been in the pinnace that brought me off.

He came close to me, and, without preparation, he electrified me by
drawling out, "I say, Rattlin, what a mess you made of it at Aniana?
That girl of yours, to my thinking, burst a blood-vessel as she was
giving you chase. I saw the blood bubble out of her mouth and nose."

"Liar!" I exclaimed, and, seizing a heavy block that one of the
afterguard was fitting, I felled him to the deck.

The base-hearted poltroon went and made his complaint to Captain Reud,
who ordered him to leave the ship immediately he came into harbour.

We must now retrograde a little in the narrative, in order to show what
events led to the disastrous catastrophe I have just related. Captain
Reud, having been lying for many, many weeks, apparently unconscious of
objects around him, one morning said, in a faint, low voice, when Dr
Thompson and Mr Farmer, the first-lieutenant, were standing near him,
"Send Ralph Rattlin to read the Bible to me."

Now, since my absence, some supposed I had been privately stabbed by one
of the few ferocious and angry marauders still left in the town; but, as
no traces of my body could be found, still more of my shipmates believed
that I had deserted. In plain sincerity, these latter friends of mine
were, as our Transatlantic brethren say, pretty considerably,
slap-dashically right. However, as the shock to the wounded captain
would have been the greater to say that I had been assassinated, they
chose the milder alternative, and told him that "they feared I had
deserted."

Captain Reud merely said, "I don't believe it," turned his face to the
bulkhead, and remained silent for three