him twenty-eight days--when I was not copying
diaries,--and I remember him with reverent honour. If he is alive he is
eighty-six years old now.

If I remember rightly, Samuel Ferguson died soon after we reached San
Francisco. I do not think he lived to see his home again; his disease
had been seriously aggravated by his hardships.

For a time it was hoped that the two quarter-boats would presently be
heard of, but this hope suffered disappointment. They went down with all
on board, no doubt, not even sparing that knightly chief mate.

The authors of the diaries allowed me to copy them exactly as they were
written, and the extracts that I have given are without any smoothing
over or revision. These diaries are finely modest and unaffected, and
with unconscious and unintentional art they rise toward the climax with
graduated and gathering force and swing and dramatic intensity; they
sweep you along with a cumulative rush, and when the cry rings out at
last, 'Land in sight!' your heart is in your mouth, and for a moment you
think it is you that have been saved. The last two paragraphs are not
improvable by anybody's art; they are literary gold; and their very
pauses and uncompleted sentences have in them an eloquence not reachable
by any words.

The interest of this story is unquenchable; it is of the sort that time
cannot decay. I have not looked at the diaries for thirty-two years, but
I find that they have lost nothing in that time. Lost? They have gained;
for by some subtle law all tragic human experiences gain in pathos by
the perspective of time. We realize this when in Naples we stand musing
over the poor Pompeian mother, lost in the historic storm of volcanic
ashes eighteen centuries ago, who lies with her child gripped close to
her breast, trying to save it, and whose despair and grief have
been preserved for us by the fiery envelope which took her life but
eternalized her form and features. She moves us, she haunts us, she
stays in our thoughts for many days, we do not know why, for she is
nothing to us, she has been nothing to anyone for eighteen centuries;
whereas of the like case to-day we should say, 'Poor thing! it is
pitiful,' and forget it in an hour.

(1) There are nineteen days of voyaging ahead yet.--M.T.

(2) Six days to sail yet, nevertheless.--M.T.

(3) It was at this time discovered that the crazed sailors had gotten
the delusion that the captain had a million dollars in gold concealed
aft,