of the great Kidd Discovery Company, since some of the leading men
engaged in that remarkable enterprise lived on the opposite side of the
river, many miles away.

The reader must not think I have drawn too extensively on my imagination
for material to create "No Man's Island" and build "Dunman's Cave" with.
About eighteen years ago I chanced to have for fellow traveller an odd
little man, of the name of Price, (better known as Button Price,) who
had been captain of a New Bedford or Nantucket whaleship. He was an
earnest, warm-hearted, talkative little man, and one of the strangest
bits of humanity it had ever been my good fortune to fall in with. He
had lost his ship on what he was pleased to call an unknown island in
the Pacific. He applied the word "unknown" for the only reason that I
could understand, that he did not know it was there until his ship
struck on it. He regarded killing a whale as the highest object a man
had to live for, and had no very high respect for the mariner who had
never "looked round Cape Horn," or engaged a whale in mortal combat. He
was on his way home to report the loss of his ship to his owners. An act
of kindness, and finding that I knew something of the sea, and could
sympathize with a sailor in misfortune, made us firm friends to the end
of our journey.

To this odd little man, then, I am indebted for the story of the old
pirate of "No Man's Island," and what took place in "Dunman's Cave;" for
it was in just such a place, according to his own account, that he lost
his ship. Much of his story, as told to me then, seemed strange and
incredible--in truth, the offspring of a brain not well balanced.

Time has shown, however, that there was much more truth in this old
whaleman's story than I had given him credit for. "No Man's Island" is