At length our voyage came to an end, and on a certain twelfth of June I found myself in the mighty city of London that I had never yet visited, and kneeling down in the chamber of my inn, I thanked God that after enduring so many dangers and hardships, it had pleased Him to preserve me to set foot again on English soil.  Indeed to this hour I count it nothing short of marvellous that this frail body of a man should survive all the sorrows and risks of death by sickness, hunger, battle, murder, drowning, wild beasts, and the cruelty of men, to which mine had been exposed for many years.

In London I bought a good horse, through the kind offices of the host of my inn, and on the morrow at daybreak I set out upon the Ipswich road.  That very morning my last adventure befell me, for as I jogged along musing of the beauty of the English landscape and drinking in the sweet air of June, a cowardly thief fired a pistol at me from behind a hedge, purposing to plunder me if I fell.  The bullet passed through my hat, grazing the skull, but before I could do anything the rascal fled, seeing that he had missed his mark, and I went on my journey, thinking to myself that it would indeed have been strange, if after passing such great dangers in safety, I had died at last by the hand of a miserable foot-pad within five miles of London town.

I rode hard all that day and the next, and my horse being stout and swift, by half-past seven o’clock of the evening I pulled up upon the little hill whence I had looked my last on Bungay, when I rode thence for Yarmouth with my father.  Below me lay the red roofs of the town; there to the right were the oaks of Ditchingham and the beautiful tower of St. Mary’s Church, yonder the stream of Waveney wandered, and before me stretched the meadow lands, purple and golden with marsh weeds in bloom.  All was as it had been, I could see no change at all, the only change was in myself.  I dismounted, and going to a pool of water near the roadway I looked at the reflection of my own face.  I was changed indeed, scarcely should I have known it for that of the lad who had ridden up this hill some twenty years ago.  Now, alas! the eyes were sunken and very sorrowful, the features were sharp, and there was more grey than black in the beard and hair.  I should scarcely have known it myself, would any others know it, I wondered?  Would there be any to know it indeed?  In twenty years many die and others pass out of sight; should I find a friend at all among the living?  Since I read the letters which Captain Bell of the ‘Adventuress’ had brought me before I sailed for Hispaniola, I had heard no tidings from my home, and what tidings awaited me now?  Above all what of Lily, was she dead or married or gone?