tmost need!"

"Well said, my boy, well said--because he has no right to get himself
flogged, and thus give a wretched world an opportunity of saying that
Ralph Rattlin had been brought to the gangway. But do not let this cast
you down. You will do well yet--while I--Oh, that I had a son!--I might
then escape. God bless you!--I must pray for strength of mind--strength
of mind--mark me, strength of mind. Go, my good boy; if misfortunes
should overtake you, and they leave me anything better than a dark cell
and clanking chains, come and share it with me. Now go (and he wrung my
hands bitterly), and tell Doctor Thompson I wish to speak with him, and
just hint to him how rationally and pleasantly we have been discoursing
together--and remember my parting words--deport yourself warily before
the doctors, carefully preserve your identity, and sometimes think on
your poor captain."

This last interview with Captain Reud, for it was my last, would have
made me wretched, had it not been swallowed up by a deeper wretchedness
of my own.

Early next morning, we weighed, and made sail for Sheerness. On
anchoring in the Medway, Captain Reud went on shore; and, as I shall
have no more occasion to refer to him, I shall state at once, that the
very fate he so feared awaited him. Six months after he had left the
_Eos_, he died raving mad, in a private receptacle for the insane.

At Sheerness we were paid off.

As I went over the side of the _Eos_ for the last time, I was tempted to
shake the dust from off my feet, for, of a surety, it had lately been an
accursed abode to me.

In order entirely to elude all observation from my late companions, I
abandoned everything I had on board, not worth much, truly, with the
exception of my sextant and telescope; and took on shore with me only
the clothes (miserable they were) in which I stood. I went to no hotel
or inn; but, seeing a plain and humble house in which there were
lodgings to let for single men, I went and hired a little apartment that
contained a press bedstead. I took things leisurely and quietly. I was
now fully determined to discover my parentage; and, after that event,
entirely to be governed by circumstances as to my future course of life,
and the resuming of the naval profession.

My first operations were sending for a tailor, hatter, and those other
architects so essential in building up the outer man. The costume I now
chose was as remote from official as could