“That I can easily account for,” answered Charley, “as the ship went down a thick fog came on, and I had drifted by up Channel; that is to say, nearly east, before the boat coming more from the north had reached the spot; and as to honest, faithful Crambo, I once upon a time picked him out of the water as he last night helped to pick me out, and he has ever since stuck by me, and I assure you that I value his friendship.”
“Oh yes! I can easily understand that,” said Margery. “I am reading about a very interesting person, a great traveller, who had a black servant called Friday, and they lived together on a desert island for a long time—it must have been very delightful—but at last they got away. I have not read the book through yet, but when I have I will tell you more about it, and perhaps Stephen Ludlow will lend it to you. I will ask him, for I am sure that you will like it.”
“Perhaps I may have read it, Miss Margery, already,” said Charley, smiling. “If it is the ‘Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,’ I have.”
“Yes, yes! that is the very book!” exclaimed Margery, “how could you guess so quickly?”
“Because I know of no other book with a man Friday in it, or one so interesting,” said Charley; “but I must tell you one thing. Friday is always spoken of as a black, but that is a mistake, as the inhabitants of all the islands in the part of the Pacific where Robinson Crusoe is supposed to have been wrecked are light brown people; some are very light. Many of them are civilised, and have become Christians, but in those days they were perfect savages, and some of them were cannibals.”
“How dreadful!” exclaimed Margery. “But have you been out in those seas?”
“Yes!” answered the midshipman, “I once came home that way, and we touched at several islands. They are very beautiful, and I should much like to go out there again.”
“So should I,” said Margery, and she sighed. She would like to have told him all about Jack, but he was as yet too great a stranger to her to allow her to speak to him on a subject which was to her almost sacred, so she said nothing; she did not even tell him that she had had a brother Jack, who had gone to sea and been lost.
Charley Blount soon became a great favourite of the inmates of the Tower, as also with most of the neighbours. His history seemed a sad one, and yet he was as merry and happy a fellow as ever lived. He had but few friends on whom he had any claim, and they were in India; the only one he had had in England, an aunt, was dead. She was the sister of his father—a maiden lady of true piety, who had indeed instructed him in the way he should go, and Charley Blount had not departed from it. This was the reason he was so merry and happy. His happiness was within himself. Captain Askew delighted in him. He seemed to him what his own boy would have been, and it was with inward satisfaction he heard that he had no friends in England to whom he could go.
“Then, Charley, you must make this old Tower your home, as long as you can keep off the salt water,” he answered. “We are grave, old-fashioned people, but we’ll do our best to make your stay with us pleasant.”