“East Indiaman? sailed from Boston for Calcutta last October was two years ago? Yes, I should think I did. I was on the sloop of war Peuguin at the Cape of Good Hope when she touched there. She remained two days, and then sailed, and was never heard of afterward.”
“We were passengers on the Sultana. After leaving the cape she encountered heavy gales, and was driven entirely out of her course and out of her reckoning, and finally upon the reef of rocks below here, where she was wrecked.”
“Great Heaven! And you were cast away here?”
“Yes.”
“And your fellow-voyagers?”
“They were but too probably all lost.”
“Tell me the particulars.”
Justin settled himself in his chair and told the tragic story of the shipwreck.
The lieutenant listened with deep interest. He was much too young a sailor to be very familiar with such disasters.
When the narrative was finished, and he had expressed all the horror and the pity that was naturally inspired by the tremendous calamity, he said: