I tried to convince him, as well as I was able, by begging him to have a little mercy on my poor digits, so he linked arms with me, in order, as I believed, to hold me close to him, for Mate Robbins, like all sailors, had a grain of superstition in his composition, and secretly feared, as he afterward confessed, that I might vanish from his presence if he failed to keep a tight hold upon me.
We stood there and talked, utterly unmindful of the surging, noisy crowd, wholly given over to the pursuit of pleasure.
When last I saw Milo Robbins, he was clinging to the wreck of the good ship Pathfinder, going to pieces upon the Samoan shore, with the hurricane howling like a pack of fiends from Tophet. Men of war were wrecked in that awful tempest, and scores of valiant bluejackets found a grave beneath the waves, or were later cast upon the shore.
I remember as though it were but yesterday how one British war vessel managed to get up steam and crawl slowly out to sea and safety, and how the brave Yankee bluejackets on the other doomed warships, being dragged mercilessly to their awful fate, gave the fortunate English vessel a roaring cheer as she went by—it was a specimen of pluck such as might proceed from no other people.
How I escaped the threatening doom would make a story in itself, and has no place here. I recovered my senses in the hut of a Samoan chief, where I had lain some days, and it was two weeks ere I felt able to go abroad.
Meanwhile Robbins had sailed away on a ship that chanced to be short-handed, and during the years that had elapsed we had believed each other dead.
It seemed a strange and very inappropriate place to exchange such confidences, bringing to mind, as they did, the terrible scenes of storm and disaster; but for the time I utterly ignored the music and laughter, and was once again clinging to that frail bit of wreck, the sport and plaything of the crashing waves, while around me great warships were breaking to pieces on that cruel shore.
How my heart warmed toward this big manly fellow. Secretly I swore in my soul he should not get away from me again, since his coming had brought the first glimpse of sunshine I had known for many a long day.
I noticed that the sturdy mate of the ill-fated Pathfinder eyed me curiously from time to time, nor could I wonder at it.
Time had made many changes in me since last we met, and I had much to tell him when the opportunity offered, that would almost shake his credulity, so like Aladdin’s tale or the story of Fortunatus would it appear.