neous eventualities as I don't care to go stirring up;
and I ask you to let me deal with the old girl after a patent of my
own."

"Certainly--what you please," said I, scarce with attention, for a new
thought now occupied my brain. "Captain," I broke out, "you are wrong:
we cannot hush this up. There is one thing you have forgotten."

"What is that?" he asked.

"A bogus Captain Trent, a bogus Goddedaal, a whole bogus crew, have all
started home," said I. "If we are right, not one of them will reach his
journey's end. And do you mean to say that such a circumstance as that
can pass without remark?"

"Sailors," said the captain, "only sailors! If they were all bound for
one place in a body, I don't say so; but they're all going separate--to
Hull, to Sweden, to the Clyde, to the Thames. Well, at each place, what
is it? Nothing new. Only one sailor-man missing: got drunk, or got
drowned, or got left--the proper sailor's end."

Something bitter in the thought and in the speaker's tones struck me
hard. "Here is one that has got left!" I cried, getting sharply to my
feet, for we had been some time seated. "I wish it were the other. I
don't--don't relish going home to Jim with this!"

"See here," said Nares, with ready tact, "I must be getting aboard.
Johnson's in the brig annexing chandlery and canvas, and there's some
things in the _Norah_ that want fixing against we go to sea. Would you
like to be left here in the chicken-ranch? I'll send for you to supper."

I embraced the proposal with delight. Solitude, in my frame of mind, was
not too dearly purchased at the risk of sunstroke or sand-blindness; and
soon I was alone on the ill-omened islet. I should find it hard to tell
of what I thought--of Jim, of Mamie, of our lost fortune, of my lost
hopes, of the doom before me: to turn to some mechanical occupation in
some subaltern rank, and to toil there, unremarked and unamused, until
the hour of the last deliverance. I was, at least, so sunk in sadness
that I scarce remarked where I was going; and chance (or some finer
sense that lives in us, and only guides us when the mind is in abeyance)
conducted my steps into a quarter of the island where the birds were
few. By some devious route, which I was unable to retrace for my return,
I was thus able to mount, without interruption, to the highest point of
land. And here I was recalled to consciousness by a last discovery.

The spot on which I stood was level, and commanded a