.

THE SOLE SURVIVOR.
A few weeks later I landed in England, I, who no longer desired to set foot on any land again.
At nine-and-twenty I was gaunt and gray; my nerves were shattered, my heart was broken; and my face showed it without let or hindrance from the spirit that was broken too.

Pride, will, courage, and endurance, all these had expired in my long and lonely battle with the sea.

They had kept me alive-for this.

And now they left me naked to mine enemies.
For every hand seemed raised against me, though in reality it was the hand of fellowship that the world stretched out, and the other was the reading of a jaundiced eye.