"But you were the captain!"
"I guess they thought I was in my cabin, and of course none of 'em dared disturb me. When I woke up, the ship was gone."
"Gosh!" exclaimed Biff.
"Well, sir, I didn't know what to do. I was like this here fellow Robinson Crusoe, that you read about. But I had to make the best of it, so I fixed myself up a little house and I lived there for nearly six months, all by myself."
"Didn't the boat come back for you?"
"They couldn't find the island again. It wasn't marked on the maps. The engineer couldn't set a course back to the island. Anyway, the quartermaster who took charge of the schooner after they found I was gone, didn't want to find me, I guess. He wanted my job."
"How did you find anything to eat when you were on the island?"
"Oh, there was lots to eat. Cocoanuts and prunes and bananas and grapefruit and figs and all sorts of fruit. There was plenty of mud-turtles on the island, so I had mock turtle soup whenever I wanted it. I tell you, I lived high. Once in a while I had my little troubles, of course, and two or three times I had some mighty narrow escapes. There was a rhinoceros came after me once."
"A rhinoceros!"
"Aye! He swam up to the island one day. I was just in for my morning swim when I saw his big ears flapping and heard him give a roar. I tell you, I was scared. He came surging through the waves and up on the beach and he chased me clean up a pineapple tree. I had to stay there for three days until he went away, and I had nothing but pineapples to eat. I was never so sick of pineapples in my life. I've never been able to eat one since."