“Very true, very true; but how did you get ashore?”

“I get ashore?  Oh, well enough!  Why not?”

“’Gad, sir, you were near enough being drowned at last; only that girl’s pluck saved you.”

“Well; but it did save me:  and here I am, as I knew I should be when I first struck out from the ship.”

“Knew!—­that is a bold word for mortal man at sea.”

“I suppose it is:  but we doctors, you see, get into the way of looking at things as men of science; and the ground of science is experience; and, to judge from experience, it takes more to kill me than I have yet met with.  If I had been going to be snuffed out, it would have happened long ago.”

“Hum!  It’s well to carry a cheerful heart; but the pitcher goes often to the well, and comes home broken at last.”

“I must be a gutta-percha pitcher, I think, then, or else—­

  “‘There’s a sweet little cherub who sits up aloft,’ etc.

as Dibdin has it.  Now, look at the facts yourself, sir,” continued the stranger, with a recklessness half true, half assumed to escape from the malady of thought.  “I don’t want to boast, sir; I only want to show you that I have some practical reason for wearing as my motto—­’Never say die.’  I have had the cholera twice, and yellow-jack beside:  five several times I have had bullets through me; I have been bayoneted and left for dead; I have been shipwrecked three times—­and once, as now, I was the only man who escaped; I have been fatted by savages for baking and eating, and got away with a couple of friends only a day or two before the feast.  One really narrow chance I had, which I never expected to squeeze through:  but, on the whole, I have taken full precautions to prevent its recurrence.”

“What was that, then?”

“I have been hanged, sir,” said the doctor quietly.

“Hanged?” cried the Lieutenant, facing round upon his strange companion with a visage which asked plainly enough—­“You hanged?  I don’t believe you; and if you have been hanged, what have you been doing to get hanged?”

“You need not take care of your pockets, sir,—­neither robbery nor murder was it which brought me to the gallows; but innocent bug-hunting.  The fact is, I was caught by a party of Mexicans, during the last war, straggling after plants and insects, and hanged as a spy.  I don’t blame the fellows:  I had no business where I was; and they could not conceive that a man would risk his life for a few butterflies.”

“But if you were hanged, sir—­”

“Why did I not die?—­By my usual luck.  The fellows were clumsy, and the noose would not work; so that the Mexican doctor, who meant to dissect me, brought me round again; and being a freemason, as I am, stood by me,—­got me safe off, and cheated the devil.”

The worthy Lieutenant walked on in silence, stealing furtive glances at Tom, as if he had been a guest from the other world, but not disbelieving his story in the least.  He had seen, as most old navy men, so many strange things happen, that he was prepared to give credit to any tale when told, as Tom’s was, with a straightforward and unboastful simplicity.