I was of value to Raa Kook, hence his royal protection.  I could work in iron, and our wrecked ship had brought the first iron to Raa Kook’s land.  On occasion, ten leagues to the north-west, we went in canoes to get iron from the wreck.  The hull had slipped off the reef and lay in fifteen fathoms.  And in fifteen fathoms we brought up the iron.  Wonderful divers and workers under water were these natives.  I learned to do my fifteen fathoms, but never could I equal them in their fishy exploits.  On the land, by virtue of my English training and my strength, I could throw any of them.  Also, I taught them quarter-staff, until the game became a very contagion and broken heads anything but novelties.

Brought up from the wreck was a journal, so torn and mushed and pulped by the sea-water, with ink so run about, that scarcely any of it was decipherable.  However, in the hope that some antiquarian scholar may be able to place more definitely the date of the events I shall describe, I here give an extract.  The peculiar spelling may give the clue.  Note that while the letter s is used, it more commonly is replaced by the letter f.

The wind being favourable, gave us an opportunity of examining and drying some of our provifion, particularly, fome Chinefe hams and dry filh, which conftituted part of our victualling.  Divine service alfo was performed on deck.  In the afternoon the wind was foutherly, with frefh gales, but dry, fo that we were able the following morning to clean between decks, and alfo to fumigate the fhip with gunpowder.

But I must hasten, for my narrative is not of Adam Strang the shipwrecked sea-cuny on a coral isle, but of Adam Strang, later named Yi Yong-ik, the Mighty One, who was one time favourite of the powerful Yunsan, who was lover and husband of the Lady Om of the princely house of Min, and who was long time beggar and pariah in all the villages of all the coasts and roads of Cho-Sen. (Ah, ha, I have you there—­Cho-Sen.  It means the land of the morning calm.  In modern speech it is called Korea.)

Remember, it was between three and four centuries back that I lived, the first white man, on the coral isles of Raa Kook.  In those waters, at that time, the keels of ships were rare.  I might well have lived out my days there, in peace and fatness, under the sun where frost was not, had it not been for the Sparwehr.  The Sparwehr was a Dutch merchantman daring the uncharted seas for Indies beyond the Indies.  And she found me instead, and I was all she found.

Have I not said that I was a gay-hearted, golden, bearded giant of an irresponsible boy that had never grown up?  With scarce a pang, when the Sparwehrs’ water-casks were filled, I left Raa Kook and his pleasant land, left Lei-Lei and all her flower-garlanded sisters, and with laughter on my lips and familiar ship-smells sweet in my nostrils, sailed away, sea-cuny once more, under Captain Johannes Maartens.