Toward the evening of the second day we sighted a steamer. As we were low to the water and they were high, this boat was comparatively near before we saw her loom above the horizon. She made us out, at last, and we breathed our thanks, to see her put about and bear down toward the good old boat which had served so nobly.
Then it was that a surge of feeling welled up within me, thoughts of my long exile, the friendly Links—who had saved my life,—and of poor old Fatty, who had sacrificed himself like a hero at the end—poor old Fatty, my loving and beloved friend.
“What is it, John?” said the goddess tenderly.
“Oh nothing,” I faltered, swallowing hard at the lump in my throttle, “I—I was just thinking that now—that now I’m no longer King of the Missing Links;—I’m just an ordinary man.”
END.
Transcriber’s Notes
- Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.
- Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard (or amusing) spellings, dialect, and idiosyncratic punctuation unchanged.
- In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)