"We was running afore it for the straits of Le Maire, and Jim Coffin on the lookout at daybreak sings out that he see the sea-sarpint ahead, with what looked like a mermaid alongside. We brought the schooner to the wind, lowered the boat, and picked you up; and though you was the deadest live man ever I see, it was all Dan and me could do to unhook your arms from round the big kelp—sea-weed stuff, you know, large round some of it as a t'gallan'-yard—that you was hanging to. But we got you aboard all right, and I hope you ain't feeling none the worse for coming to life again."
Such is the explanation to which I listen as one in a strange dream, while I stare vacantly about me from among the blankets of a narrow berth in a snug little cabin. The speaker is Captain Samuel Dole, of the sailing schooner Wayland, from Desolation Island, bound to New London, Connecticut, with a full fare of skins and seal oil. Captain Dole administers divers restoratives with such good effect that by night I am clothed and in my right mind again.
A swift-sailing schooner is the Wayland, and forty-one days later I am literally received with open arms and open-mouthed astonishment by those who had seen me set sail for San Francisco. My story makes me a nine days' hero, and a little later I have the pleasure of seeing in the paper the arrival of the ship Sandwich—Drew, master—at San Francisco, one hundred and twenty-three days from New York; "Harry Franks, ordinary seaman, lost on the passage."
I have no chance of personally contradicting this statement until, three years afterward, I ship as second mate on board the bark Doris, whose captain proves to be Mr. Thatcher K. Burns, formerly second officer of the Sandwich. He does not welcome me as one from the dead. Captain Burns has seen too many strange things in his sea-faring life to be surprised at anything. He looks sharply at me for a moment, as I rather effusively greet him.
"Ah, yes," he says, in his sharp, business-like way; "thought I'd seen you somewhere, Mr.—er—Franks. Picked up, were you? So was I. Hadn't swum twenty strokes before the Sandwich's boat reached me, and a sweet job we had getting back to the ship. Well, get the decks cleared up as soon as possible. I want to get away on morning tide. Some of the men will be down directly," and with a nod Captain Burns hurries off to the Custom-house for his clearance papers.
And this is what the blotted entry in my old pocket diary refers to.