earched all our pockets with the utmost care, and laid
their contents out on a flat stone before us; and, now that our minds
were fully alive to our condition, it was with no little anxiety that we
turned our several pockets inside out, in order that nothing might escape
us. When all was collected together we found that our worldly goods
consisted of the following articles:--

First, A small penknife with a single blade broken off about the middle
and very rusty, besides having two or three notches on its edge.
(Peterkin said of this, with his usual pleasantry, that it would do for a
saw as well as a knife, which was a great advantage.) Second, An old
German-silver pencil-case without any lead in it. Third, A piece of whip-
cord about six yards long. Fourth, A sailmaker's needle of a small size.
Fifth, A ship's telescope, which I happened to have in my hand at the
time the ship struck, and which I had clung to firmly all the time I was
in the water. Indeed it was with difficulty that Jack got it out of my
grasp when I was lying insensible on the shore. I cannot understand why
I kept such a firm hold of this telescope. They say that a drowning man
will clutch at a straw. Perhaps it may have been some such feeling in
me, for I did not know that it was in my hand at the time we were
wrecked. However, we felt some pleasure in having it with us now,
although we did not see that it could be of much use to us, as the glass
at the small end was broken to pieces. Our sixth article was a brass
ring which Jack always wore on his little finger. I never understood why
he wore it, for Jack was not vain of his appearance, and did not seem to
care for ornaments of any kind. Peterkin said "it was in memory of the
girl he left behind him!" But as he never spoke of this girl to either
of us, I am inclined to think that Peterkin was either jesting or
mistaken. In addition to these articles we had a little bit of tinder,
and the clothes on our backs. These last were as follows:--

Each of us had on a pair of stout canvass trousers, and a pair of
sailors' thick shoes. Jack wore a red flannel shirt, a blue jacket, and
a red Kilmarnock bonnet or night-cap, besides a pair of worsted socks,
and a cotton pocket-handkerchief, with sixteen portraits of Lord Nelson
printed on it, and a union Jack in the middle. Peterkin had on a striped
flannel shirt,--which he wore outside his trousers, and belted round his
waist, after the manner