ue-eyed, white-haired, stooping old man with a soft voice and
pleasant smile, he had bade Denison goodbye and said with his tremulous
laugh, "Don't be surprised if when you come back you find my old hull
has broken up before that of the wreck. Eighty-seven is a good age, Mr.
Denison. However, I'll take things easy. I'll let some of my boys" (his
"boys" were sons of over forty years of age) "do all the bullocking{*}
part of the work."

* A colonial expression denoting heavy labour--i.e., to work
like bullocks in a team.

*****

When Denison reached the landing-place he was met by a number of the old
whaler's whitey-brown descendants, who told him that Jack was dead--had
died three months ago, they said. And there was a letter for the
supercargo and captain, they added, which the old man had written when
he knew he was dying. Denison took the letter and read it at once.

"Dear Mr. Denison,--Tom and Sam will give you all
particulars about the gear and metal from the wreck.... You
asked me one day if I would write you something about the
privateer I sailed in, and some of the fights in which I was
engaged. You and Captain Packenham might like to read it
some day when time hangs heavy. Sam will give you the
yarn.... Goodbye. I fear we shall not meet again.--Yours
very truly, John Oxley."

A few days later, as the _Indiana_ was sailing northward from Tucopia,
Denison took out old Oxley's yarn. It was written in a round schoolboy
hand on the blank pages of a venerable account-book.

*****

"Old as I am now I have never forgotten the exultant feeling that filled
my bosom one dull gray morning in February, 1805, when I, John Oxley,
put my weak hands to the capstan bars to help weigh anchor on board the
_Port-au-Prince_ at Gravesend, and the strange, wild thrill that tingled
my boyish blood at the rough, merry chorus of the seamen while the
anchor came underfoot and the hands sprang aloft to make sail. For I
was country-born and country-bred, and though even in our little town of
Aylesbury, where my father was a farmer, we were used to hearing tales
of the sea and to the sight of those who had fought the king's battles
by land and sea, I had never until that morning caught sight of the
ocean.

"Two weeks before I, foolish lad that I was, had been enticed by two
village comrades into a poaching venture, and although I took no actual
part therein--being only stationed as