ompany) had not Providence seen fit to send me help in a
most strange and unexpected manner. And thus it was:

One morning when I came upon deck I saw several of the passengers,
together with the captain and the first mate, standing at the lee side
of the ship and looking out forward, Captain Croker with a glass to his
eye. Upon inquiring they told me that the lookout had some little time
before sighted a small open boat, which had been signalling the ship
with what they were now able to make out was a shirt tied to the blade
of an oar. We ran down to the boat, which we reached in twenty or thirty
minutes, and then hove to, and it came alongside.

There were three men in her, who seemed to be in a mightily good
condition for castaways in an open boat. I stood looking down into it
along with other of the passengers, watching the men as they took in
their oars and laid them along the thwarts. Just then one of the fellows
raised his face and looked up; and when I saw him I could not forbear a
sudden exclamation of amazement. I remember one of my fellow-passengers,
a Mr. Wilson, who stood next to me, asked me what was the matter. I made
some excuse or other that was of little consequence, but the truth was
that I recognized the fellow as that very pirate who had first kicked me
in the loins when I lay bound upon the deck of the _Cassandra_, and whom
Captain England had knocked down with the iron belaying-pin.

However, the fellow did not recognize me, for I was a very different
object now than when he had seen me lying upon the pirate deck, pinched
with my sickness, barefoot and half naked, and my cheeks and chin
covered over with a week's growth of beard. The three fellows presently
came aboard, and were brought aft to the quarter-deck, where Captain
Croker stood, just below the rail of the deck above. They told a very
straightforward story, and I could not help admiring at their coolness
and the clever way in which they passed it off. They said that they had
been part of the crew of the brigantine _Ormond_, which had been lost in
a storm about a hundred and twenty leagues north of the island of
Madagascar. That the captain and six of the crew had taken the
long-boat, and that they had become separated from her in the darkness
two nights before. They answered all of Captain Croker's questions in a
very straightforward manner, and with all the appearance of truth. After
satisfying himself, he told them that they might go b