make it appear that there really was a man overboard, who might have
been comforted and sustained by the material consolation that we so
lavishly dispensed in the form of buoyant articles belonging to others,
the British heart would find in that fact a mitigating circumstance
pleading eloquently in our favor. Gentlemen and ship's officers, I
venture to propose that we do now throw a man overboard."

The effect was electrical: the motion was carried by acclamation and
there was a unanimous rush for the now wretched mariner whose false
alarm at the masthead was the cause of our embarrassment, but on second
thoughts it was decided to substitute Captain Troutbeck, as less
generally useful and more undeviatingly in error. The sailor had made
one mistake of considerable magnitude, but the captain's entire
existence was a mistake altogether. He was fetched up from his cabin and
chucked over.

At 900 Tottenham Road Court lived an aunt of mine--a good old lady who
had brought me up by hand and taught me many wholesome lessons in
morality, which in my later life have proved of extreme value. Foremost
among these I may mention her solemn and oft-repeated injunction never
to tell a lie without a definite and specific reason for doing so. Many
years' experience in the violation of this principle enables me to speak
with authority as to its general soundness. I have, therefore, much
pleasure in making a slight correction in the preceding chapter of this
tolerably true history. It was there affirmed that I threw the
_Bonnyclabber's_ log-book into the sea. The statement is entirely false,
and I can discover no reason for having made it that will for a moment
weigh against those I now have for the preservation of that log-book.

The progress of the story has developed new necessities, and I now find