CHAPTER XXVIII Suspicions Laid, And Something About The Calmuc

Though abounding in details full of the savor of reality, Samoa’s narrative did not at first appear altogether satisfactory.  Not that it was so strange; for stranger recitals I had heard.

But one reason, perhaps, was that I had anticipated a narrative quite different; something agreeing with my previous surmises.

Not a little puzzling, also, was his account of having seen islands the day preceding; though, upon reflection, that might have been the case, and yet, from his immediately altering the Parki’s course, the Chamois, unknowingly might have sailed by their vicinity.  Still, those islands could form no part of the chain we were seeking.  They must have been some region hitherto undiscovered.

But seems it likely, thought I, that one, who, according to his own account, has conducted himself so heroically in rescuing the brigantine, should be the victim of such childish terror at the mere glimpse of a couple of sailors in an open boat, so well supplied, too, with arms, as he was, to resist their capturing his craft, if such proved their intention?  On the contrary, would it not have been more natural, in his dreary situation, to have hailed our approach with the utmost delight?  But then again, we were taken for phantoms, not flesh and blood.  Upon the whole, I regarded the narrator of these things somewhat distrustfully.  But he met my gaze like a man.  While Annatoo, standing by, looked so expressively the Amazonian character imputed to her, that my doubts began to waver.  And recalling all the little incidents of their story, so hard to be conjured up on the spur of a presumed necessity to lie; nay, so hard to be conjured up at all; my suspicions at last gave way.  And I could no longer harbor any misgivings.

For, to be downright, what object could Samoa have, in fabricating such a narrative of horrors—­those of the massacre, I mean—­unless to conceal some tragedy, still more atrocious, in which he himself had been criminally concerned?  A supposition, which, for obvious reasons, seemed out of the question.  True, instances were known to me of half-civilized beings, like Samoa, forming part of the crews of ships in these seas, rising suddenly upon their white ship-mates, and murdering them, for the sake of wrecking the ship on the shore of some island near by, and plundering her hull, when stranded.

But had this been purposed with regard to the Parki, where the rest of the mutineers?  There was no end to my conjectures; the more I indulged in them, the more they multiplied.  So, unwilling to torment myself, when nothing could be learned, but what Samoa related, and stuck to like a hero; I gave over conjecturing at all; striving hard to repose full faith in the Islander.

Jarl, however, was skeptical to the last; and never could be brought completely to credit the tale.  He stoutly maintained that the hobgoblins must have had something or other to do with the Parki.