If I had been going to be snuffed out, it would have happened long ago." "Hum! It's well to carry a cheerful heart; but the pitcher goes often to the well, and comes home broken at last." "I must be a gutta-percha pitcher, I think, then, or else-- "'There's a sweet little cherub who sits up aloft,' etc.
as Dibdin has it.

Now, look at the facts yourself, sir," continued the stranger, with a recklessness half true, half assumed to escape from the malady of thought.

"I don't want to boast, sir; I only want to show you that I have some practical reason for wearing as my motto--'Never say die.' I have had the cholera twice, and yellow-jack beside: five several times I have had bullets through me; I have been bayoneted and left for dead; I have been shipwrecked three times--and once, as now, I was the only man who escaped; I have been fatted by savages for baking and eating, and got away with a couple of friends only a day or two before the feast.

One really narrow chance I had, which I never expected to squeeze through: but, on the whole, I have taken full precautions to prevent its recurrence." "What was that, then ?" "I have been hanged, sir," said the doctor quietly.
"Hanged ?" cried the Lieutenant, facing round upon his strange companion with a visage which asked plainly enough--"You hanged?
I don't believe you; and if you have been hanged, what have you been doing to get hanged ?" "You need not take care of your pockets, sir,--neither robbery nor murder was it which brought me to the gallows; but innocent bug-hunting.

The fact is, I was caught by a party of Mexicans, during the last war, straggling after plants and insects, and hanged as a spy.