SUPPLEMENT.
The manner of my preservation from the Haunted Island, as well as other particulars, may seem to many of my readers incredible; and some, perhaps, will not stickle to brand the whole relation as a fabulous tale.
I can only say, and I do aver it, that herein I have set down nothing but what really fell out in my experience, described nothing but what I really saw in my brief sojourn on the island; which is a misfortune one way, leaving some things inevitably obscure.
As to what happened to me after my escape in the pirate barque, ’tis beyond the drift of my relation, since nothing further transpired concerning the island itself. Indeed, as I believe, ’twas not only utterly devastated by that dreadful eruption and conflagration, but sunk to the bottom of the sea. And, as one returned from those parts did tell me, there goes a rumour amongst seafaring men of an enchanted island at the bottom of the sea. Perchance it was set on foot by those pirates who escaped with me; for, certainly, we alone survived.
I owed my preservation from their hands at first, mainly to the fact that they were always fuddled with drink; like a drunken ship, she drove, in fair weather and foul, with only her topsails abroad, our course (if a course it can be called), being generally westward. At length, after many days, and when both our drink and victuals were nigh consumed, we drove blundering ashore upon an unknown and uninhabited island.
This brought the pirates to their senses; and, having no more drink to befuddle themselves with, they began to amend, and took thought how to preserve their lives. In this time also, they took a notion into their superstitious heads, that ’twas for my sake they had been miraculously preserved, so that I was, as it were, the contrary to a Jonah unto them.
The ship had grounded on a shoal, in calm weather; and, not being stuck very fast, we contrived to float her off. Having anchored her, we went all on shore, to fill our jars and to lade cocoanuts and plantains, and afterwards loosed to sea again, committing ourselves to the conduct of God. For there was not a navigator among us, and we had quite lost our reckoning.
At length, we came to another island, where we anchored again, filled our jars, and laded more cocoanuts and plantains; and so on from island to island: sometimes suffering dreadful privations in the vaste desolate sea, when we despaired in our minds of seeing land ever any more; sometimes at imminent peril of our lives from savages and cannibals—yet marvellously preserved, until, at last, having wandered about for above two years, by the mercy of God, we came to the Island of Mindanao of the Philippine Islands; whence we stretched across to the coast of China, towards the Isle of Macao.
Here was a Portuguese ship about to sail, and I went on board of her. But the pirates remained behind.
From Lisbon I got me a passage to Plymouth; and so home to Clayton Manor, where, with my father, the Squire, I dwell unto this day.
(I thank Mr. N. W. Physick for his drawing of a King’s ship.—E. H. Visiak.)
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FOOTNOTES:
[A] Madras.
[B] How the Englishman would have grieved if he had known that the Mosquito Indians, faithful to the last, would be betrayed, to their fate, by the English Government into the hands of the Spaniards: in 1787.
[C] How this white light was contrived I never could learn. (Original footnote.)
Perhaps by means of a radio-active earth discovered by Doctor Copicus.
[D] This gully could not have been the ravine by which Clayton and Thalass ascended in their shore adventure. The gully must have been farther north.
[E] The episode of the cut cable and the driving ship remains obscure. The many indraughts of water caused by the creeks and waterfalls on this side of the island, however, must have occasioned many currents converging upon the shore. Accordingly, the cutting of the cable, or cables, of a ship anchored within the current-zone (the wind being subservient, or neutral), would cause that ship to drive ashore.
[F] Perhaps the explosion of the “grain” of the Doctor’s “combustible” which had “wrought the convulsion,” had, at the same time, released the pent-up forces of the “volcan.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.