"This is a deuced queer rencontre! are you sailor or soldier, Carib or what?"
"Come, come, Percival; surely I am not so altered as to be taken for a Carib, though I have lived like one for many a day. Thanks be to Providence, you have come to my rescue! Cannot you remember me—Ellis of the Scots Fusiliers—Lieutenant Ellis, who sailed from Guadaloupe and Los Santos in the prize privateer Etna on a special duty?"
"With Ned Stanley—remember you, my dear fellow, of course!" said he, grasping his hand, as his companions, now assured that I was neither a satyr, an Orson, a Casper Hauser, or likely to eat them, came round me; and the joy I felt on hearing their voices, and seeing their open, honest, and weatherbeaten English faces, was so great in my swelling heart, that it almost amounted to pain.
"How came this about—that we find you here and alone?" asked Percival.
"We encountered a hurricane——"
"Ah—whereabout?"
"Off the isle of Avis, or the tail of the Avis Bank—the ship foundered—capsized and went down."
"With all hands on board?"
"All, French passengers and every one."
"Never mind the French," said one, "but poor Ned Stanley——"