She won't scratch it out, and quite honourable; because we have made an
understanding that everything is to be taken down, and that nothing that
is once taken down shall be scratched out. I have the great misfortune
not to be able to read and write, and I am speaking my true and faithful
account of those Adventures, and my lady is writing it, word for word.
I say, there I was, a-leaning over the bulwarks of the sloop Christopher
Columbus in the South American waters off the Mosquito shore: a subject
of his Gracious Majesty King George of England, and a private in the
Royal Marines.
In those climates, you don't want to do much. I was doing nothing. I
was thinking of the shepherd (my father, I wonder?) on the hillsides by
Snorridge Bottom, with a long staff, and with a rough white coat in all
weathers all the year round, who used to let me lie in a corner of his
hut by night, and who used to let me go about with him and his sheep by
day when I could get nothing else to do, and who used to give me so
little of his victuals and so much of his staff, that I ran away from
him--which was what he wanted all along, I expect--to be knocked about
the world in preference to Snorridge Bottom.
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