ectacle before me
that gripped and held me, but an associated idea. As it was the first
time I had ever seen a skyscraper lift itself above the clouds, so it
naturally reminded me of the first time I had seen a mountaintop above
the clouds. This was Krakatoa Island, a conical mountain rising from
the sea in the Straits of Sunda, but since submerged in the Java
earthquake.

With this mental picture before me, my thoughts touched upon other
happenings of that boyhood voyage--the long, tedious beat through the
straits against light head winds and a continuous head tide; the
man-killing log windlass, round which we hove, and lightened, chain of
an eight-inch link; the natives, with their welcome fruit in exchange
for trinkets; and, lastly, the white-haired old pilot, who came forward
to visit me one evening on anchor watch.

And then, like an inspired flash, there surged into my mind, not only
the two galley yarns, but the story told by the pilot--a story of such
burning power and horror that, though forgotten for a generation, it
spelled itself out, word for word, as I stared into the fog from the
window, exactly as the old man had told it.

He had heard from the skipper that I was from the same part of New York
State as himself, and he had come forward for news of home. I could
give him little. I knew no one that he knew; the small town that give
him birth was not far from my own, but was only a name to me. Still he
remained to talk. My up-State accent pleased him, he said, and reminded
him of home, which he had not seen for forty years, and which he hardly
hoped to see. He was sixty-five; two shocks had come, and the third
would finish him.

"But I'm an old, experienced man, my boy," he said, "and I can give you
my life's wisdom in three short rules, easy to remember and easy to
follow. Stick to your skipper; leave liquor alone; and never, under any
provocation, engage in mutiny. I broke every one of these, and here
I've been, for half a lifetime, an exile, afraid to go home."

Not realizing how sorely I needed this wisdom, but keenly interested in
mutiny, piracy, and such fancies of boyhood, I asked for light, and he
gave it to me.

"I won't tell you the name of the ship," he said; "for you'll be a boy
for some time to come, and you might talk about it. Nor will I give you
the real names of the men engaged in that mutiny; for it is only forty
years back, and there may be men alive yet who will be interested in
t