Then he threw back his head with a sort of mechanical twist, and screamed out at the top of his voice, for the last time on earth, his mysterious message: "Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll! God save the king! Confound the Duke of York! Death to all arrant knaves and roundheads! "In the nineteenth year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second, I, Nathaniel Cross, of the borough of Sunderland, in the county of Doorham, in England, an able-bodied mariner, then sailing the South Seas in the good bark Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island, called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry.

In which wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners, whereof I am one, who in God's good providence swam safely through an exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island.

There my two companions, Owen Williams, of Swansea, in the parts of Wales, and Lewis le Pickard, a French Hewgenott refugee, were at once, by the said gentiles, cruelly entreated, and after great torture cooked and eaten at the temple of their chief god, Too-Keela-Keela.

But I, myself, having through God's grace found favor in their eyes, was promoted to the post which in their speech is called Korong, the nature of which this bird, my mouthpiece, will hereafter, to your ears, more fully discover." Having said so much, in a very jerky way, Methuselah paused, and blinked his eyes wearily.
"What does he say ?" the Frenchman began, eager to know the truth.

But Felix, fearful lest any interruption might break the thread of the bird's discourse and cheat them of the sequel, held up a warning finger, and then laid it on his lips in mute injunction.