elonged to was cut off by the savages and every soul on
board killed except himself; and how after he had been for several years
made to work like a slave he escaped and got on board a Dutch
merchantman. He was working his passage home in her when she was cast
away on this island, and only he and two other Englishmen were saved.
But that's not what I was coming to. When I happened to be talking of
Captain Headland he seemed wonderfully interested. `Why Jacob,' he
said, `that's my name.' I then told him that he and you, sir, were old
shipmates, and that you knew much more about him than I did, sir. Jack
asked me if I would come and speak to you, for he is just like a man out
of his mind, he is so eager to know who the captain is."

"Tell him I shall be glad to speak to him at once," said Harry, much
interested in what he had heard, and Jacob hurried off to call Jack.

Jack soon reached the hut, showing his man-of-war's-man manners by
doffing his hat and pulling one of his long locks. His countenance,
though burned and bronzed almost to blackness, and somewhat frizzled by
age and exposure, wore the same honest, kind expression which Headland
had described.

"Sit down, my friend," said Harry, giving him one of a couple of stools
he had manufactured. "Halliburt has been telling me that you wish to
hear about Captain Headland."

"Ay, that I do, sir, and if you knew how my heart is set on him, for I
am sure it must be him, you would not wonder that I make bold to axe
you. I never had a son, but if I had, I could not love him better than
I did that lad, whom I watched over ever since he was a small child just
able to toddle about the decks by himself. I took charge of him when
there was no one else to see that he did not come to harm, and I may
say, though there is nothing to boast of in it, I saved his life more
than once when he would have been drowned or burned to death, or carried
away by the savages. It was a proud day when I saw him placed on the
quarter-deck with a fair chance of becoming an admiral, as I am very
sure he will be, and there was nothing so much went to my heart when I
was made a prisoner by the rascally Malays as the thought that I could
no longer have an eye on him, and maybe help him a bit with my cutlass
in boarding an enemy or in such like work. And then, when I at last got
away from the Malays and was coming home to hear about him again, as I
hoped, it was just the bitterest thing that