The masts and spars, therefore, being linked to the
wreck by the shrouds and the rigging, remained alongside for four days.
Captain Phips sailed from England in the Rose Algier, and cruised for nearly two years in the West Indies, endeavoring to find the
wreck of the Spanish ship.
He tried to get on to Vanikoro, where, according to the Lascar, he would find numerous debris of the
wreck, but winds and tides prevented him.
- Worked on the
wreck; cut another beam asunder, and brought three great fir planks off from the decks, which I tied together, and made to float on shore when the tide of flood came on.
How he happened to have come to Africa he did not tell them, leaving them to assume he had forgotten the incidents of his life prior to the frightful ordeals that had
wrecked him mentally and physically.
Some efforts were even then being made, to cut this portion of the
wreck away; for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest.
When I was
wrecked in the Solomons on the blackbirder, the Minota, it was Captain Kellar, master of the blackbirder, the Eugenie, who rescued me.
When was I
wrecked? When was I first adrift in the boat?
He'd call it an adventure -- that's what he'd call it; and he'd land on that
wreck if it was his last act.
And thereat, solicited by Joan, Tudor narrated the
wreck of the Huahine; while Sheldon smoked and pondered, and decided that whatever the man's shortcomings were, he was at least not a liar.
His not ignoble ambition seems always to have been to be
wrecked upon an island, indeed I am told that he mentioned it insinuatingly in his prayers, and it was perhaps inevitable that a boy with such an outlook should fascinate David.
But she will never see me, for they do not let me out of this shabby stable - a foul and miserable place, with most two
wrecks like myself for company.