“I’ll not say just that much, your Honour; for there is no knowing what lucky accident might have done the same good turn for me.  Howsomever, seeing that I can swim no better nor worse than a double-headed shot, I have always been willing to give the black credit for as much, though little has ever been said between us on the subject; for no other reason, as I can see, than that settling-day has not yet come.  Well, we contrived to get the boat afloat, and enough into it to keep soul and body together, and made the best of our way for the land, seeing that the cruise was, to all useful purposes, over in that smuggler.  I needn’t be particular in telling this lady of the nature of boat-duty, as she has lately had some experience in that way herself; but I can tell her this much:  Had it not been for that boat in which the black and myself spent the better part of ten days, she would have fared but badly in her own navigation.”

“Explain your meaning.”

“My meaning is plain enough, your Honour, which is, that little else than the handy way of master Harry in a boat could have kept the Bristol trader’s launch above water, the day we fell in with it.”

“But in what manner was your own shipwreck connected with the safety of Mr Wilder?” demanded the governess, unable any longer to await the dilatory explanation of the prolix seaman.

“In a very plain and natural fashion, my Lady, as you will say yourself, when you come to hear the pitiful part of my tale.  Well, there were I and Guinea, rowing about in the ocean, on short allowance of all things but work, for two nights and a day, heading-in for the islands; for, though no great navigators, we could smell the land, and so we pulled away lustily, when you consider it was a race in which life was the wager, until we made, in the pride of the morning, as it might be here, at east-and-by-south a ship under bare poles; if a vessel can be called bare that had nothing better than the stumps of her three masts standing, and they without rope or rag to tell one her rig or nation.  Howsomever, as there were three naked sticks left, I have always put her down for a full-rigged ship; and, when we got nigh enough to take a look at her hull, I made bold to say she was of English build.”

“You boarded her,” observed the Rover.

“A small task that, your Honour, since a starved dog was the whole crew she could muster to keep us off.  It was a solemn sight when we got on her decks, and one that bears hard on my manhood,” continued Fid, with an air that grew more serious as he proceeded, “whenever I have occasion to overhaul the log-book of memory.”

“You found her people suffering of want!”

“We found a noble ship, as helpless as a halibut in a tub.  There she lay, a craft of some four hundred tons, water-logged, and motionless as a church.  It always gives me great reflection, sir, when I see a noble vessel brought to such a strait; for one may liken her to a man who has been docked of his fins, and who is getting to be good for little else than to be set upon a cat-head to look out for squalls.”