THE PERILS OF CERTAIN ENGLISH PRISONERS


CHAPTER I--THE ISLAND OF SILVER-STORE


It was in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-four,
that I, Gill Davis to command, His Mark, having then the honour to be a
private in the Royal Marines, stood a-leaning over the bulwarks of the
armed sloop Christopher Columbus, in the South American waters off the
Mosquito shore.

My lady remarks to me, before I go any further, that there is no such
christian-name as Gill, and that her confident opinion is, that the name
given to me in the baptism wherein I was made, &c., was Gilbert. She is
certain to be right, but I never heard of it. I was a foundling child,
picked up somewhere or another, and I always understood my christian-name
to be Gill. It is true that I was called Gills when employed at
Snorridge Bottom betwixt Chatham and Maidstone to frighten birds; but
that had nothing to do with the Baptism wherein I was made, &c., and
wherein a number of things were promised for me by somebody, who let me
alone ever afterwards as to performing any of them, and who, I consider,
must have been the Beadle. Such name of Gills was entirely owing to my
cheeks, or gills, which at that time of my life were of a raspy
description.

My lady stops me again, before I go any further, by laughing exactly in
her old way and waving the feather of her pen at me. That action on her
part, calls to my mind as I look at her hand with the rings on it--Well!
I won't! To be sure it will come in, in its own place. But it's always