start in life. And do not--Don't beach her, you beggars, he can
wade!--Do not waste the precious solitude before you in foolish
thoughts. Properly used, it may be a turning-point in your career.
Waste neither money nor time. You will die rich. I'm sorry, but
I must ask you to carry your tucker to land in your arms. No; it's
not deep. Curse that explanation of yours! There's not time.
No, no, no! I won't listen. Overboard you go!"

And the falling night found Mr. Ledbetter--the Mr. Ledbetter who
had complained that adventure was dead--sitting beside his cans
of food, his chin resting upon his drawn-up knees, staring through
his glasses in dismal mildness over the shining, vacant sea.

He was picked up in the course of three days by a negro fisherman
and taken to St. Vincent's, and from St. Vincent's he got, by
the expenditure of his last coins, to Kingston, in Jamaica. And there
he might have foundered. Even nowadays he is not a man of affairs,
and then he was a singularly helpless person. He had not the remotest
idea what he ought to do. The only thing he seems to have done was
to visit all the ministers of religion he could find in the place
to borrow a passage home. But he was much too dirty and incoherent--
and his story far too incredible for them. I met him quite by chance.
It was close upon sunset, and I was walking out after my siesta
on the road to Dunn's Battery, when I met him--I was rather bored,
and with a whole evening on my hands--luckily for him. He was trudging
dismally towards the town. His woebegone face and the quasi-clerical
cut of his dust-stained, filthy costume caught my humour. Our eyes met.
He hesitated. "Sir," he said, with a catching of the breath, "could
you spare a few minutes for what I fear will seem an incredible story?"