"You go along, Maister Ralph," quoth old Wills. "What should a babe, the likes of you, know about such things."
Ralph made a face at his old friend, and begged Osborn to tell him the end of the midshipman.
"Well, 'ee doan't deserve as I should," said Osborn; "but, howsomever, the boy gave in. He wor but a babe hisself,—only fourteen,—and life was sweet to him even at that cost; so he took the woman, and tried to do his best with her, though it was sorry work. They tattooed him all over, face and all, to make him look as like themselves as they could; and he wore no clothes, but lived just like them. He got to do so exactly like them that he could pick up a fishhook from the ground with his toes, just like they could; and he had some children, and was looked upon in time just like the rest.
"He lived twenty years like this, and never saw a British ship, nor a white face, nor a sign of home all that time, for the island was an out-of-the-way one. Then, one day, all to once he saw that there merchantman in the offing. He wor a-fishing by himself, and he watched the vessel sailing nearer and nearer, old half-forgotten thoughts of home, and friends, and old England, cropping up clearer and clearer every minute; and with them a yearning for them, tearing at his heart like, till he could bear it no longer. He just jumped into the sea, and swam off to the ship.
"The poor fellow was so afraid of being caught and claimed again by his family in the island, that the skipper changed his tack, and sailed away from it, so he was brought home in safety.
"Then came the difficulty of proving himself to be Charles Danby, for nobody could recognise him. He'd left home a rosy-faced, curly-haired lad of thirteen; he came back looking like a South-Sea islander of thirty-four.
"His father was dead, but his mother was still living, and she did not know him all to once, nor none of his friends.
"But it wor no such tale as Tichborne's. He remembered all sorts of things that none but he could know,—people's names, old jokes, old stories, people in the village dead and gone, things that had happened at school.
"It was for ever, 'Where is the old cabinet that did stand here?' 'What has become of the gamekeeper's boy, Jack?' and so on.