We had been out from Owyhee, as
it was then usual to call the island where Cook was killed--Hawaii, as
it is called to-day--we had been out from this island, about a month,
when Marble came up to me one fine, moon-light evening, in my watch,
rubbing his hands, as was his custom when in good humour, and broke
out as follows:--
"I'll tell you what, Miles," he said, "you and I have been salted down
by Providence for something more than common! Just look back at all
our adventures in the last three years, and see what they come
to. Firstly, there was shipwreck over here on the coast of
Madagascar," jerking his thumb over a shoulder in a manner that was
intended to indicate about two hundred degrees of longitude, that
being somewhat near our present distance from the place he mentioned,
in an air line; "then followed the boat business under the Isle of
Bourbon, and the affair with the privateer off Guadaloupe. Well, as if
that wern't enough, we ship together again in this vessel, and a time
we had of it with the French letter-of-marque. After that, a devil of
a passage we made of it through the Straits of Magellan. Then came the
melancholy loss of Captain Williams, and all that business; after
which we got the sandal-wood out of the wreck, which I consider the
luckiest transaction of all.
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