“Ay—your cur'osity's a troublesome inmate, and will never be quiet as long as one tries to keep it under hatches; especially female cur'osity. Well, I must gratify you; and so I'll make no more bones about it, though its giving an account of my own obstinacy and folly. I reckon, now, my boys, you missed me the day the ship sailed from the island?”
“That we did, and supposed you had got tired of your experiment before it began,” I answered, “so were off, before we were ourselves.”
“You had reason for so thinking; though you were out in your reckoning, too. No; it happened in this fashion. After you left me, I began to generalize over my sitiation, and I says to myself, says I, 'Moses Marble, them lads will never consent to sail and leave you here, on this island, alone like a bloody hermit,' says I. 'If you want to hold on,' says I, 'and try your hand at a hermitage,' says I, 'or to play Robinson Crusoe,' says I, 'you must be out, of the way when the Crisis, sails'—boys, what's become of the old ship? Not a word have I heard about her, yet!”
“She was loading for London, when we sailed, her owners intending to send her the same voyage over again.”
“And they refused to let you have her, Miles, on account of your youth, notwithstanding all you did for them?”
“Not so; they pressed me to keep her, but I preferred a ship of my own. The Dawn is my property, Master Moses!”
“Thank God! then there is one honest chap among the owners. And how did she behave? Had you any trouble with the pirates?”
Perceiving the utter uselessness of attempting to hear his own story before I rendered an account of the Crisis, and her exploits, I gave Marble a history of our voyage, from the time we parted down to the day we reached New York.
“And that scaramouch of a schooner that the Frenchman gave us, in his charity?”
“The Pretty Poll! She got home safe, was sold, and is now in the West-India trade. There is a handsome balance, amounting to some fourteen hundred dollars, in the owners' hands, coming to you from prize-money and wages.”