cut a bit of rope from the raffle hanging from the spar, and tied
one end round my waist and the other round his own, leaving about five
fathoms loose between us.

"'There,' he shouted in my ear. 'If either of us gets chucked well up,
and the natives get a hold of him, the other must come up, too. Now
mind, Ben, keep broadside on to the wave if you can, and let it roll
you up as far as it will take you. Then, when you feel that its force
is spent, stick your fingers and toes into the sand, and hold on like
grim death.'

"Well, we drifted nearer and nearer until, just as we got to the point
where the great waves tumbled over, the captain cut the lashings and
swam a little away, so as to be clear of the spar. Then a big wave
came towering up. I was carried along like a straw in a whirlpool.
Then there was a crash that pretty nigh knocked the senses out of me.
I do not know what happened afterwards. It was a confusion of white
water rushing past and over me. Then for a moment I stopped, and at
once made a clutch at the ground that I had been rolling over. There
was a big strain, and I was hauled backwards as if a team of wild
horses were pulling at me. Then there was a jerk, and I knew nothing
more, till I woke up and found myself on the sands, out of reach of
the surf.

"Your father did not come to for half an hour. He had been hurt a bit
worse than I had, but at last he came round.

"Well, we were kept three months in a sort of castle place; and then
one day a party of chaps, with guns and swords, came into the yard
where we were sitting. The man, who seemed the head of the fellows who
had been keeping us prisoners, walked up with one who was evidently an
officer over the chaps as had just arrived. He looked at us both, and
then laid his hand on the captain. Then the others came up.

"The captain had just time to say, 'We are going to be parted, Ben.
God bless you! If ever you get back, give my love to my wife, and tell
her what has happened to me, and that she must keep up her heart, for
I shall make a bolt of it the first time I get a chance.'

"The next day, I was taken off to a place they call Calicut. There I
stopped a year, and then the rajah of the place joined the English
against Tippoo, who was lord of all the country, and I was released. I
had got, by that time, to talk their lingo pretty well, though I have
forgotten it all now, and I had found out that the chaps who had taken
your father away were a p