A part of his wonderful adventures he had related to Falconbridge; he had not mentioned, however, thousands of other incidents.  It had been his misfortune that as often as he pitched his tent and fixed his fireplace to settle down permanently, some wind tore out the stakes of his tent, whirled away the fire, and bore him on toward destruction.  Looking now from the balcony of the tower at the illuminated waves, he remembered everything through which he had passed.  He had campaigned in the four parts of the world, and in wandering had tried almost every occupation.  Labor-loving and honest, more than once had he earned money, and had always lost it in spite of every prevision and the utmost caution.  He had been a gold-miner in Australia, a diamond-digger in Africa, a rifleman in public service in the East Indies.  He established a ranch in California,—­the drought ruined him; he tried trading with wild tribes in the interior of Brazil,—­his raft was wrecked on the Amazon; he himself alone, weaponless, and nearly naked, wandered in the forest for many weeks living on wild fruits, exposed every moment to death from the jaws of wild beasts.  He established a forge in Helena, Arkansas, and that was burned in a great fire which consumed the whole town.  Next he fell into the hands of Indians in the Rocky Mountains, and only through a miracle was he saved by Canadian trappers.  Then he served as a sailor on a vessel running between Bahia and Bordeaux, and as harpooner on a whaling-ship; both vessels were wrecked.  He had a cigar factory in Havana, and was robbed by his partner while he himself was lying sick with the vomito.  At last he came to Aspinwall, and there was to be the end of his failures,—­for what could reach him on that rocky island?  Neither water nor fire nor men.  But from men Skavinski had not suffered much; he had met good men oftener than bad ones.

But it seemed to him that all the four elements were persecuting him.  Those who knew him said that he had no luck, and with that they explained everything.  He himself became somewhat of a monomaniac.  He believed that some mighty and vengeful hand was pursuing him everywhere, on all lands and waters.  He did not like, however, to speak of this; only at times, when some one asked him whose hand that could be, he pointed mysteriously to the Polar Star, and said, “It comes from that place.”  In reality his failures were so continuous that they were wonderful, and might easily drive a nail into the head, especially of the man who had experienced them.  But Skavinski had the patience of an Indian, and that great calm power of resistance which comes from truth of heart.  In his time he had received in Hungary a number of bayonet-thrusts because he would not grasp at a stirrup which was shown as means of salvation to him, and cry for quarter.  In like manner he did not bend to misfortune.  He crept up against the mountain as industriously as an ant.  Pushed down a hundred times, he began his journey calmly for the hundred and first time.  He was in his way a most peculiar original.  This old soldier, tempered, God knows in how many fires, hardened in suffering, hammered and forged, had the heart of a child.  In the time of the epidemic in Cuba, the vomito attacked him because he had given to the sick all his quinine, of which he had a considerable supply, and left not a grain to himself.