The other was a young man whom, four years previous, I had frequently met in a sailor boarding-house in Liverpool.

I remembered parting with him at Prince's Dock Gates, in the midst of a swarm of police-officers, trackmen, stevedores, beggars, and the like.

And here we were again:--years had rolled by, many a league of ocean had been traversed, and we were thrown together under circumstances which almost made me doubt my own existence.
But a few moments passed ere I was sent for into the cabin by the captain.
He was quite a young man, pale and slender, more like a sickly counting-house clerk than a bluff sea-captain.

Bidding me be seated, he ordered the steward to hand me a glass of Pisco.

In the state I was, this stimulus almost made me delirious; so that of all I then went on to relate concerning my residence on the island I can scarcely remember a word.