 fished with old pipe stores, and her rigging knotted and spliced in every
possible direction. Her crew was composed of some twenty venerable
Greenwich-pensioner-looking old salts, who just managed to hobble about deck.
The ends of all the running ropes, with the exception of the signal halyards and
poop-down-haul, were rove through snatch-blocks, and led to the capstan or
windlass, so that not a yard was braced or a sail set without the assistance of
machinery.
    Her hull was encrusted with barnacles, which completely encased her. Three
pet sharks followed in her wake, and every day came alongside to regale
themselves from the contents of the cook's bucket, which were pitched over to
them. A vast shoal of bonettas and albicores always kept her company.
    Such was the account I heard of this vessel, and the remembrance of it
always haunted me; what eventually became of her I never learned; at any rate
she never reached home, and I suppose she is still regularly tacking twice in
the twenty-four hours somewhere off Buggerry Island, or the Devil's-Tail Peak.
    Having said thus much touching the usual length of these voyages, when I
inform the reader that ours had as it were just commenced, we being only fifteen
months out, and even at that time hailed as a late arrival, and boarded for
news, he will readily perceive that there was little to encourage one in looking
forward to the future, especially as I had always had a presentiment that we
should make an unfortunate voyage, and our experience so far had justified the
expectation.
    I may here state, and on my faith as an honest man, that though more than
three years have elapsed since I left this same identical vessel, she still
continues in the Pacific, and but a few days since I saw her reported in the
papers as having touched at the Sandwich Islands previous to going on the coast
of Japan.
    But to return to my narrative. Placed in these circumstances, then, with no
prospect of matters mending if I remained aboard the Dolly, I at once made up my
mind to leave her: to be sure, it was rather an inglorious thing to steal away
privily from those at whose hands I had received wrongs and outrages that I
could not resent; but how was such a course to be avoided when it was the only
alternative left me? Having made up my mind, I proceeded to acquire all the
information I could obtain relating to the island and its inhabitants, with a
view of shaping my plans of escape accordingly. The result
