Mr. Baker came back to the ship about a couple of hours after the marooned men had come aboard. He had spent more than an hour in going to and fro, looking for Smith’s body, but had seen no sign of it, and had concluded that it had sunk at once. That seemed strange, for the lungs must have been full of air, but nobody gave it a second thought unless some of the most disaffected of the crew did; none of them, in all probability, gave so much as a first thought to the fact. I do not really doubt that Smith was dead, and that his body was swaying about in the ooze at the bottom of the sea, unless the sharks got it first. But I remember that soon after I got home, I saw an account—merely an item of a few lines in a shipping paper—of a man’s having been taken off Amsterdam Island, and the description of the man might have been the description of Smith. He had forgotten who he was and how he got there, and he had been badly hurt, but he had managed to live alone for two years on the island. However, whether that was Smith or not, he passed out of our lives when he dropped from the yard. Captain Coffin was in the cabin with Captain Nelson when Mr. Baker’s boat’s crew came over the side. Mr. Baker showed no surprise when he heard of it, but Starbuck did. He immediately sought out the two men who had come aboard with Captain Coffin, and I suppose he got their story. I was not free, as I was wanted to wait upon the two captains; but that was no disadvantage, for I got the story as Captain Coffin told it to Captain Nelson. They sat at the cabin table, leaning back in their chairs at their ease, with a pitcher of hot rum and water between them. I remember the pitcher exactly. It was a rather {270} small white crockery pitcher, with a bluish tinge, such as they used to serve water in at country hotels, only smaller. They sat there quietly, and the hot rum and water steamed gently between them; and Captain Coffin had his fingers clasped loosely about his glass, but he drank little, and that in little sips. Between times he either gazed contentedly out of the cabin window, saying nothing, or he spoke briefly of his experiences in the Battles or on Amsterdam. His utterances were never long at any one time, but always punctuated by a sip and a long look out of the window. Captain Nelson said nothing at all. I stuck around rather more closely than was necessary.