e bread of idleness,' was his
answer. `I'll do duty in any station to which I am appointed.'

"The corvette was bound round the Horn, so back again into the Pacific I
went. We touched at many places in Chili and Peru, and then stood to
the west to visit some of the many islands in those seas. I had been
about a year on board when one day an object was seen from the
mast-head, which was made out to be a boat.

"There was one man sitting up in her, but three others lay dead under
the thwarts. The man was brought on board more dead than alive, and had
it not been for the watchful care of our surgeon he could not have long
survived. At first he was nothing but skin and bone, with sunken eyes
and hollow cheeks, but when he got some flesh on him I recognised him as
one of my shipmates who had deserted us on the Falkland Islands. He had
not, it seemed, discovered any of us, and of course in two years I was
so grown that he did not know me. So one day, sitting by him, I asked
him how it was he came into the plight in which we found him. He told
me many circumstances of which I was cognisant, and how the ship was
wrecked on the Falklands, and how part of the people had gone off into
the interior, and deserted those who wisely remained on the sea-shore.
`Never mind, they must have got their deserts, and perished,' he added;
and then he told me a ship appearing the day after we left, they had all
gone on board. They soon found that the crew had been guilty of some
foul deed; the captain and mate had been killed, with some others, and
the rest had determined to turn pirates. My shipmate was asked if he
would do so. They swore if he did not that he must die. To save his
life, he with the rest consented to join them. I will not repeat the
account he gave of all the crimes which he and his companions had
committed. He said that he had protested against them, and excused
himself. From bad they went on to worse, and frequently quarrelling,
murdered each other. The end was that this ship was cast away on a
reef, one boat only escaping, and of the people in her, after she had
been nearly a month drifting over the ocean, he alone survived. We who
had been left alone on the Falklands had reason to be thankful that we
had not gone off in the pirate ship. Had we done so, who among us could
have said that we should have escaped the terrible fate which overtook
our shipmates? From the time I learned the Lord's Prayer, there i