Mark was dying to hear Bob’s story, more especially since he understood a ship was connected with it, but he could not refuse his friend’s demand for sweet water and a dinner.  The entrance of the cove was quite near and the boats entered that harbour and were secured; after which the three men commenced the ascent, Mark picking up by the way the spy-glass, fowling-piece, and other articles that he had dropped in the haste of his descent.  While going up this sharp acclivity, but little was said; but, when they reached the summit, or the plain rather, exclamations of delight burst from the mouths of both of Mark’s companions.  To the young man’s great surprise, those which came from Bob’s dark-skinned associate were in English, as well as those which came from Bob himself.  This induced him to take a good look at the man, when he discovered a face that he knew!

“How is this, Bob?” cried Mark, almost gasping for breath—­“whom have you here?  Is not this Socrates?”

“Ay, ay, sir; that’s Soc; and Dido, his wife, is within a hundred miles of you.”

This answer, simple as it was, nearly overcame our young man again.  Socrates and Dido had been the slaves of Bridget, when he left home; a part of the estate she had received from her grandmother.  They dwelt in the house with her, and uniformly called her mistress.  Mark knew them both very well, as a matter of course; and Dido, with the archness of a favourite domestic, was often in the habit of calling him her ’young master.’  A flood of expectations, conjectures and apprehensions came over our hero, and he refrained from putting any questions immediately, out of pure astonishment.  He was almost afraid indeed to ask any.

Nearly unconscious of what he was about, he led the way to the grove where he had dined two or three hours before, and where the remainder of the reed-birds were suspended from the branch of a tree.  The embers of the fire were ready, and in a few minutes Socrates handed Betts his dinner.

Bob ate and drank heartily.  He loved a tin-pot of rum and-water, or grog, as it used to be called—­though even the word is getting to be obsolete in these temperance times—­and he liked good eating.  It was not epicurism, however, or a love of the stomach, that induced him to defer his explanations on the present occasion.  He saw that Mark must hear what he had to relate gradually, and was not sorry that the recognition of the negro had prepared him to expect something wonderful.  Wonderful it was, indeed; and at last Betts, having finished his dinner, and given half-a-dozen preparatory hints, in order to lessen the intensity of his young friend’s feelings, yielded to an appeal from the other’s eyes, and commenced his narrative.  Bob told his story, as a matter of course, with a great deal of circumlocution, and in his own language.  There was a good deal of unnecessary prolixity in it, and some irrelative digressions touching currents, and the trades, and the weather; but, on the whole, it was given intelligibly, and with sufficient brevity for one who devoured every syllable he uttered.  The reader, however, would most probably prefer to hear an abridgement of the tale in our own words.