hy you should have any doubts as to
the truth of my narrative?" said Mr Johnson, drawing himself up and
casting an indignant glance at the midshipman.

"Let me tell you that a thousand things have occurred to me, a hundred
thousand times more wonderful than that, during every part of my life;
and some day, if you catch me in the humour for talking, perhaps I will
tell you about them. I've only time just now to tell you of another
somewhat strange adventure which befell me.

"Not finding a ship at Glasgow to suit my fancy, I went to Liverpool,
where I shipped on board a South Sea whaler, called the Diddleus. She
was a fine craft, measuring full six hundred tons. I won't tell you
just now some of the curious events which occurred before we reached the
South Seas. Our success was not very satisfactory. We met with various
accidents, and among others we lost our first mate, who was killed by a
blow from a white whale's tail in a flurry, and as the captain had the
discernment to perceive that there was not a man on board equal to me,
he appointed me to the vacant berth. I little thought how soon I should
get a step higher. The captain, poor fellow, was enormously fat, and as
he was one day looking into the copper to watch how the blubber was
boiling, his foot slipped on the greasy deck, and in he fell head
foremost. No one missed him at the moment, and he was stirred up and
turned into oil before any one knew what had happened. The accident
indeed was only discovered by our finding his buttons and the nails of
his shoes at the bottom of the copper. In consequence of this sad
catastrophe, I became master of the good ship Diddleus. Either through
my judgment, or good luck, it does not become me to say which, we very
soon began to fill our casks at a rapid rate.

"We had, of course, always our boats ready to go in chase of a fish at a
moment's notice. One day two of them were away, and had killed, dead to
windward of us, a large whale, towards which I was endeavouring to beat
up, when the look-out man from the crow's nest, a sharp-sighted fellow,
Jerry Wilkins by name, hailed the deck to say that there was land in
sight on our lee bow. I knew very well that there wasn't, and couldn't
be, but when I went aloft and looked out myself, I was dumbfoundered,
for there I saw a dark long island, with what I took for a number of
trees growing on it like weeping willows. Presently the island began to
grow larger and large