"'Gad, sir, you were near enough being drowned at last; only that girl's pluck saved you."
"Well; but it did save me: and here I am, as I knew I should be when I first struck out from the ship."
"Knew!—that is a bold word for mortal man at sea."
"I suppose it is: but we doctors, you see, get into the way of looking at things as men of science; and the ground of science is experience; and, to judge from experience, it takes more to kill me than I have yet met with. If I had been going to be snuffed out, it would have happened long ago."
"Hum! It's well to carry a cheerful heart; but the pitcher goes often to the well, and comes home broken at last."
"I must be a gutta-percha pitcher, I think, then, or else—
"'There's a sweet little cherub who sits up aloft,' etc.
as Dibdin has it. Now, look at the facts yourself, sir," continued the stranger, with a recklessness half true, half assumed to escape from the malady of thought. "I don't want to boast, sir; I only want to show you that I have some practical reason for wearing as my motto—'Never say die.' I have had the cholera twice, and yellow-jack beside: five several times I have had bullets through me; I have been bayoneted and left for dead; I have been shipwrecked three times—and once, as now, I was the only man who escaped; I have been fatted by savages for baking and eating, and got away with a couple of friends only a day or two before the feast. One really narrow chance I had, which I never expected to squeeze through: but, on the whole, I have taken full precautions to prevent its recurrence."
"What was that, then?"
"I have been hanged, sir," said the doctor quietly.