“Ven I come out I traw my 150 soffrins unt puy a pelt to carry dem rount me. Unt I pig up mit a nice liddle gal from de country, unt ve haf a yolly time. Ve make it oop to ked marrit righd off, unt dake dat cook-shop so soon as I haf yoost a liddle run rount. Den I sdart on de spree unt I keep it oop for tree veeks, until I ked bad in my het, allvus dirsty unt nefer can’t get any trinks dat seems vet. Afterwards I co vat you call oudt--off my het, unt I tond’t know vedder I isn’t back in de Panama agen, fightin’, fightin’ all day unt all night. Ven I ked vell agen, I got nuthin’, no money, no close, no vife. So I tink I petter go unt look for a ship, unt ven I ked dis von I ain’t eat anyting for tree days.”
Then, as abruptly as he had opened the conversation, he closed it by getting up and leaving us, having, I supposed, obeyed the uncontrollable impulse to tell his story that comes now and then upon every man.
Morning broke bleakly forbidding on the iron-bound coast of Kerguelen Island. Over the fantastic peaks, flung broadcast as if from the primeval cauldron of the world, hung a grim pall of low, grey-black cloud, so low, indeed, that the sea-birds drifting disconsolately to and fro between barren shore and gale-tossed sea were often hidden from view as if behind a fog-bank, and only their melancholy screams denoted their presence, until they glinted into sight again like huge snow-flakes hesitating to fall. Yet it was the Antarctic mid-summer, it was the breaking of Christmas Day.
As the pale dawn grew less weak, it revealed a tiny encampment, just a few odds and ends of drifting wreckage piled forlornly together, and yielding a dubious shelter to a huddled-up group of fourteen men, sleeping in spite of their surroundings. Presently, there were exposed, perched upon the snarling teeth of an outlying rock-cluster, the “ribs and trucks” of a small wooden ship, a barque-rigged craft of about four hundred tons. Her rigging hung in slovenly festoons from the drunkenly standing masts, the yards made more angles with their unstable supports than are known to Euclid, while through many a jagged gap in her topsides the mad sea rushed wantonly, as if elated with its opportunities of marring the handiwork of the daring sea-masters.