his," said he, "and I may yet believe you have
honour. For honour is a man's own act; a discovery is fortune's; and for
its advantages, did I stay, I should not have to thank you. But I want
none such. Set me on shore, and there I will follow my own destiny."

To this poor request, the iron-souled commander of the vessel, at last
consented; and in the course of some weeks after, Laonce was landed on
the coast of Kamschatka. His secret intent was to lie in wait for the
possibility of some ship touching at the port where he was set ashore,
that might be bound to the track of his beloved islands; but not
uttering a word of this, to the reprobate wretch who had torn him
thence, he simply bade him "farewell! and to use his next pilot better;"
so saying, they parted for ever. But weeks and months passed away, and
no vessel bound for the South Seas, showed itself in that distant
latitude; and its gloomy fogs, and chilling atmosphere, its pale sky,
where the sun never shone for more than three or four hours in the day,
seemed to wither up his life with his waning hopes! In no way did it
resemble the land he had left; the warm, and the genial heavens of the
home he was yet bent to find again;--and he left Kamschatka for some
more propitious port; but, like _Sinbad the Sailor_, he wandered in
vain. A cruel spell seemed set on him, or on the spirit of adventure;
for in no place could he hear of a vessel going the way of his prayers.
At last he arrived, by a most tedious and circuitous journey at Moscow,
with a design to lay his case before the young and ardent Alexander, the
then Emperor of Russia; with the hope that his benevolence, and a sense
of what he had done for the vessel which had betrayed him, would incline
his majesty to make some effort to return him to his island, and his
family.

That this hope was not vain, the character of the good Alexander, since
proved by a life of undeviating promptness to all acts of humanity, may
be a sufficient voucher. But whether the homeward-bound chief, found, on
his setting his foot again upon the ground whence he had been so cruelly
rifled; and whence, indeed, the innocent confidence, the playful
bravery of his fond wife, had urged him; whether he found his
cherishly-remembered home, yet standing as he left it; and her, still
the tender and the true to his never-wandered heart; and whether his
children sprang to his knee, to share the parental caress; and the
people around, raised the