On the eve of sailing they put a letter in a keg, giving the Pacific Ocean intelligence of the affair, and moored the keg in the bay.  Some time subsequent, the keg was opened by another captain chancing to anchor there, but not until after he had dispatched a boat round to Oberlus’s Landing.  As may be readily surmised, he felt no little inquietude till the boat’s return:  when another letter was handed him, giving Oberlus’s version of the affair.  This precious document had been found pinned half-mildewed to the clinker wall of the sulphurous and deserted hut.  It ran as follows:  showing that Oberlus was at least an accomplished writer, and no mere boor; and what is more, was capable of the most tristful eloquence.

“Sir:  I am the most unfortunate ill-treated gentleman that lives.  I am a patriot, exiled from my country by the cruel hand of tyranny.

“Banished to these Enchanted Isles, I have again and again besought captains of ships to sell me a boat, but always have been refused, though I offered the handsomest prices in Mexican dollars.  At length an opportunity presented of possessing myself of one, and I did not let it slip.

“I have been long endeavoring, by hard labor and much solitary suffering, to accumulate something to make myself comfortable in a virtuous though unhappy old age; but at various times have been robbed and beaten by men professing to be Christians.

“To-day I sail from the Enchanted group in the good boat Charity bound to the Feejee Isles.

“FATHERLESS OBERLUS.

“P.S.—­Behind the clinkers, nigh the oven, you will find the old fowl.  Do not kill it; be patient; I leave it setting; if it shall have any chicks, I hereby bequeath them to you, whoever you may be.  But don’t count your chicks before they are hatched.”

The fowl proved a starveling rooster, reduced to a sitting posture by sheer debility.

Oberlus declares that he was bound to the Feejee Isles; but this was only to throw pursuers on a false scent.  For, after a long time, he arrived, alone in his open boat, at Guayaquil.  As his miscreants were never again beheld on Hood’s Isle, it is supposed, either that they perished for want of water on the passage to Guayaquil, or, what is quite as probable, were thrown overboard by Oberlus, when he found the water growing scarce.

From Guayaquil Oberlus proceeded to Payta; and there, with that nameless witchery peculiar to some of the ugliest animals, wound himself into the affections of a tawny damsel; prevailing upon her to accompany him back to his Enchanted Isle; which doubtless he painted as a Paradise of flowers, not a Tartarus of clinkers.

But unfortunately for the colonization of Hood’s Isle with a choice variety of animated nature, the extraordinary and devilish aspect of Oberlus made him to be regarded in Payta as a highly suspicious character.  So that being found concealed one night, with matches in his pocket, under the hull of a small vessel just ready to be launched, he was seized and thrown into jail.