You were right, too, in saying that you thought
I had known the Pontiac before I stepped first on her deck that day. I
had."
He laid his disengaged hand across lightly on Rosey's, as if to assure
himself that she was listening.
"I was at that time a sailor. I had been fool enough to run away from
college, thinking it a fine romantic thing to ship before the mast for
a voyage round the world. I was a little disappointed, perhaps, but I
made the best of it, and in two years I was the second mate of a whaler
lying in a little harbor of one of the uncivilized islands of the
Pacific. While we were at anchor there a French trading vessel put in,
apparently for water. She had the dregs of a mixed crew of Lascars and
Portuguese, who said they had lost the rest of their men by desertion,
and that the captain and mate had been carried off by fever. There was
something so queer in their story that our skipper took the law in his
own hands, and put me on board of her with a salvage crew. But that
night the French crew mutinied, cut the cables, and would have got to
sea if we had not been armed and prepared, and managed to drive them
below.
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