Well--and now for the log; for I suppose you'll
insist on overhauling it, lads?"
"That we shall; and see you miss no leaf of it. Be as particular as if
it were overhauled in an insurance case."
"Ay; they're bloody knaves, sometimes, them underwriters; und a fellow
need be careful to get his dues out of them--that is to say,
_some_; others, ag'in, are gentlemen, down to their shoe-buckles,
and no sooner see a poor shipwrecked devil, than they open their
tills, and begin to count out, before he has opened his mouth."
"Well, but your own adventures, my old friend; you forget we are dying
with curiosity."
"Ay--your cur'osity's a troublesome inmate, and will never be quiet as
long as one tries to keep it under hatches; especially female
cur'osity. Well, I must gratify you; and so I'll make no more bones
about it, though its giving an account of my own obstinacy and
folly. I reckon, now, my boys, you missed me the day the ship sailed
from the island?"
"That we did, and supposed you had got tired of your experiment before
it began," I answered, "so were off, before we were ourselves."
"You had reason for so thinking; though you were out in your
reckoning, too. No; it happened in this fashion. After you left me, I
began to generalize over my sitiation, and I says to myself, says I,
'Moses Marble, them lads will never consent to sail and leave you here,
on this island, alone like a bloody hermit,' says I.
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