But how is it that you are here?
Were you shipwrecked like ourselves ?" "No; I may say I was deserted.

My name is Charles Irons, and I was left at Poseat by a trading vessel four years ago." "How came that ?" "I was to act as the agent of a company of traders on the Cocoanut Islands.

Well, the vessel left me, as I first told you, and that was the last of it.

They forgot all about me, or more likely, did not care to keep their promise, for I have never seen anything of the vessel since." "What an outrage!" "It was, and there couldn't have been a more wretched person than I was for several months.

I looked longingly out to sea for the ship that never came, and chafed like a man who is bound hand and foot.