By such means every man was saved,
though it was near a month before all were themselves again. As for
Captain Robbins and Kite, they were enabled to attend to duty by the
end of a week, though nothing more was exacted of them than they chose
to perform.
CHAPTER VI.
"The yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up."
_Macbeth._
Poor Captain Robbins! No sooner did he regain his bodily strength,
than he began to endure the pain of mind that was inseparable from the
loss of his ship. Marble, who, now that he had fallen to the humbler
condition of a second-mate, was more than usually disposed to be
communicative with me, gave me to understand that our old superior had
at first sounded Captain Digges on the subject of proceeding to the
wreck, in order to ascertain what could be saved; but the latter had
soon convinced him that a first-rate Philadelphia Indiaman had
something else to do besides turning wrecker. After a pretty broad
hint to this effect, the John, and all that was in her, were abandoned
to their fate. Marble, however, was of opinion that the gale in which
the launch came so near being lost, must have broken the ship entirely
to pieces, giving her fragments to the ocean. We never heard of her
fate, or recovered a single article that belonged to her.
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