What hair-breadth escapes did I meet with? I have been asked. Was I
ever marooned? Ever cast away, as Jack says, on the top crust of a
half-penny loaf? Ever overboard among sharks? Ever gazing madly round
the horizon, the sole occupant of a frizzling boat, in search of a
ship where I might obtain water to cool my blue and frothing lips?
Well, my duff is not a very considerable one, and the few plums in it
I fear are almost wide enough apart to be out of hail of one another.
However a sample or two will suffice to enable me to keep my word and
to write something at all events autobiographic.
So let us start off Cape Horn on a July day in the year of grace 1859.
The ship was a fine old Australian liner, a vessel of hard upon 1400
tons, a burden that in those days constituted a large craft. She was
commanded by one Captain Neatby, something of a favourite I believe in
the passenger trade--a careful old man with bow-legs and a fiery
grog-blossom of a nose. He wore a tall chimney-pot hat in all weathers,
and was reckoned a very careful man because he always furled his fore
and mizzen royals in the first dog-watch every night. We were a long
way south; I cannot remember the exact latitude, but I know it was
drawing close upon sixty degrees.
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