be knocked about the world in preference to Snorridge Bottom.  I had been knocked about the world for nine-and-twenty years in all, when I stood looking along those bright blue South American Waters.  Looking after the shepherd, I may say.  Watching him in a half-waking dream, with my eyes half-shut, as he, and his flock of sheep, and his two dogs, seemed to move away from the ship’s side, far away over the blue water, and go right down into the sky.

“It’s rising out of the water, steady,” a voice said close to me.  I had been thinking on so, that it like woke me with a start, though it was no stranger voice than the voice of Harry Charker, my own comrade.

“What’s rising out of the water, steady?” I asked my comrade.

“What?” says he.  “The Island.”

“O!  The Island!” says I, turning my eyes towards it.  “True.  I forgot the Island.”

“Forgot the port you’re going to?  That’s odd, ain’t it?”

“It is odd,” says I.

“And odd,” he said, slowly considering with himself, “ain’t even.  Is it, Gill?”

He had always a remark just like that to make, and seldom another.  As soon as he had brought a thing round to what it was not, he was satisfied.  He was one of the best of men, and, in a certain sort of a way, one with the least to say for himself.  I qualify it, because, besides being able to read and write like a Quarter-master, he had always one most excellent idea in his mind.  That was, Duty.  Upon my soul, I don’t believe, though I admire learning beyond everything, that he could have got a better idea out of all the books in the world, if he had learnt them every word, and been the cleverest of scholars.

My comrade and I had been quartered in Jamaica, and from there we had been drafted off to the British settlement of Belize, lying away West and North of the Mosquito coast.  At Belize there had been great alarm of one cruel gang of pirates (there were always more pirates than enough in those Caribbean Seas), and as they got the better of our English cruisers by running into out-of-the-way creeks and shallows, and taking the land when they were hotly pressed, the governor of Belize had received orders from home to keep a sharp look-out for them along shore.  Now, there was an armed sloop came once a-year from Port Royal, Jamaica, to the Island, laden with all manner of necessaries, to eat, and to drink, and to wear, and to use in various ways; and it was aboard of that sloop which had touched at Belize, that I was a-standing, leaning over the bulwarks.

The Island was occupied by a very small English colony.  It had been given the name of Silver-Store.  The reason of its being so called, was, that the English colony owned and worked a silver-mine over on the mainland, in Honduras, and used this Island as a safe and convenient place to store their silver in, until it was annually fetched away by the sloop.  It was brought down from the mine to the coast on the backs of mules, attended by friendly Indians and guarded by white men; from thence it was conveyed over to Silver-Store, when the weather was fair, in the canoes of that country; from Silver-Store, it was carried to Jamaica by the armed sloop once a-year, as I have already mentioned; from Jamaica, it went, of course, all over the world.