"Poor boy!" said Uncle Loveday. "Poor boy! I suppose the sight of
this man frightened him."

I caught the Captain's eye, and nodded feebly.

"Ah, yes, yes. You see," he explained, turning to the shipwrecked
man, "your sudden appearance upset him: and to tell you the honest
truth, my friend, in your present condition--in your present
condition, mind you--your appearance is perhaps somewhat--startling.
Shall we say, startling?"

In answer to my uncle's apologetic hesitation the stranger merely
spread out his palms and shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah, yes. A foreigner evidently. Well, well, although our coast is
not precisely hospitable, I believe its inhabitants are at any rate
free from that reproach. Jasper, my boy, can you walk now? If so,
Joseph here will see you home, and we will do our best for the--the--
foreign gentleman thus unceremoniously cast on our shores."

My uncle seemed to regard magnificence of speech as the natural due
of a foreigner: whether from some hazy conception of "foreign
politeness," or a hasty deduction that what was not the language of
one part of the world must be that of another, I cannot say. At any
rate, the fishermen regarded him approvingly as the one man who
could--if human powers were equal to it--extricate them from the
present deadlock.

"You do not happen, my friend, to be in a position to inform us
whether any--pardon the expression--any corpses are now lying on the