ogether while we slept.

It would not be easy to say which party was the most astonished at this
recognition. There was Marble, whom I had supposed washed off the raft,
safe in the launch; and here was I, whom the other two had thought to have
gone down in the ship, safe on the raft! We appeared to have changed
places, without concert and without expectation of ever again meeting.
Though ignorant of the means through which all this had been brought
about, I very well know what we did, as soon as each man was certain that
he saw the other standing before him in the flesh. We sat down and wept
like three children. Then Neb, too impatient to wait for Marble's
movements, threw himself into the sea, and swam to the raft. When he got
on the staging, the honest fellow kissed my hands, again and again,
blubbering the whole time like a girl of three or four years of age. This
scene was interrupted only by the expostulations and proceedings of
the mate.

"What's this you're doing, you bloody nigger!" cried Marble. "Desarting
your station, and leaving me here, alone, to manage this heavy launch, by
myself. It might be the means of losing all hands of us again, should a
hurricane spring up suddenly, and wreck us over again."

The truth was, Marble began to be ashamed of the weakness he had
betrayed, and was ready to set upon anything, in order to conceal it. Neb
put an end to this sally, however, by plunging again into the water, and
swimming back to the boat, as readily as he had come to the raft.

"Ay, here you are, Neb, nigger-like, and not knowing whether to stay or to
go," growled the mate, busy the whole time in shipping two oars. "You put
me in mind of a great singer I once heard in Liverpool; a chap that would
keep shaking and quavering at the end of a varse, in such a style that he
sometimes did not know whether to let go or to hold on. It is onbecoming
in men to forget themselves, Neb; if we have found him we thought to be
lost, it is no reason for desarting our stations, or losing our
wits--Miles, my dear boy," springing on the raft, and sending Neb adrift
again, all alone, by the backward impetus of the leap--"Miles, my dear
boy, God be praised for this!" squeezing both my hands as in a vice--"I
don't know how it is--but ever since I 've fallen in with my mother and
little Kitty, I've got to be womanish. I suppose it's what you call
domestic affection."

Here, Marble gave in once more, blubbering just as hard as Neb