“I’ll take the young man, at any rate, and you may have the boy.”
They wrapped him in a blanket, and he was so emaciated that Charlie took him in his arms as though he had been an infant, and put him into the whale boat.
“Wife,” said the captain, the next morning, as he sat watching his charge, as he lay sleeping, after having eaten more than he had allowed him at one time before, “do you know that since this young man has come to himself a bit he looks very natural to me. I’ve seen him, or some of his folks, before.”
“It wouldn’t be at all strange if you had, for you have been a traveller all your life.”
“It beats all how familiar his features look; and the more I look at him, the more the likeness grows upon me. He’s the very image of somebody I’ve known and loved right well, but to save me, I can’t tell who. He’ll be strong enough to talk when he wakes, and I’ll know who he is, and all about it. Only see, Mary, how the color has come into his lips! they are not drawn apart as they were. See how his eyeballs are filled out, and his fingers; and his nose is not so sharp as it was. He’s doing first rate.”
As the captain had predicted, the young man, who had been within a hair’s breadth of eternity, awoke a few minutes before noon, extremely weak, but free from stupor, and in partial possession of his faculties, and inquired where he was.
“You are among friends, young man, and safe; make yourself easy. Where are you from?”
“Salem.”
“Salem! Was you born and brought up in Salem?”