occasion, I might say, gave rise to prejudice. I do not mind telling you
that I chanced to learn of one of the greatest discoveries that man has
ever made."

Now we were approaching dangerous ground, but a sudden sense of his
sufferings at the hands of the ignorant came to my help, and I asked to
hear more with all the deference I really felt. A swallow flew into
the schoolhouse at this moment as if a kingbird were after it, and beat
itself against the walls for a minute, and escaped again to the open
air; but Captain Littlepage took no notice whatever of the flurry.

"I had a valuable cargo of general merchandise from the London docks to
Fort Churchill, a station of the old company on Hudson's Bay," said the
captain earnestly. "We were delayed in lading, and baffled by head winds
and a heavy tumbling sea all the way north-about and across. Then the
fog kept us off the coast; and when I made port at last, it was too late
to delay in those northern waters with such a vessel and such a crew as
I had. They cared for nothing, and idled me into a fit of sickness;
but my first mate was a good, excellent man, with no more idea of being
frozen in there until spring than I had, so we made what speed we could
to get clear of Hudson's Bay and off the coast. I owned an eighth of
the vessel, and he owned a sixteenth of her. She was a full-rigged ship,
called the Minerva, but she was getting old and leaky. I meant it should
be my last v'y'ge in her, and so it proved. She had been an excellent
vessel in her day. Of the cowards aboard her I can't say so much."

"Then you were wrecked?" I asked, as he made a long pause.

"I wa'n't caught astern o' the lighter by any fault of mine," said the
captain gloomily. "We left Fort Churchill and run out into the Bay with
a light pair o' heels; but I had been vexed to death with their red-tape
rigging at the company's office, and chilled with stayin' on deck an'
tryin' to hurry up things, and when we were well out o' sight o' land,
headin' for Hudson's Straits, I had a bad turn o' some sort o' fever,
and had to stay below. The days were getting short, and we made good
runs, all well on board but me, and the crew done their work by dint of
hard driving."

I began to find this unexpected narrative a little dull. Captain
Littlepage spoke with a kind of slow correctness that lacked the
longshore high flavor to which I had grown used; but I listened
respectfully while he explained the winds having