"Howsomever, Doctor, there wa'n't no smooth sailin' nor fair weather with the cap'en; 'twas always squally in his latitude, and I begun to get mutinous and think of desartin'. About eighteen months arter we sot sail from Valparaiso, I hadn't done somethin' I'd been ordered, or I'd done it wrong, and Cap'en Twist come on deck, ragin' and roarin', with a handspike in his fist, and let fly at my head. I see what was comin', and put my arm up to fend it off; and gettin' the blow on my fore-arm, it got broke acrost as quick as a wink, and I dropped. So they picked me up, and havin' a mate aboard who knew some doctorin', I was spliced and bound up, and put under hatches on the sick-list. I tell you I was dog-tired them days, lyin' in my berth, hearin' the rats and mice scuttle round the bulkheads and skitter over the floor. I couldn't do nothin', and finally I bethought myself of Hetty's Bible and contrived to get it out o' my chist,--and when I could get a bit of a glim I'd read it. I'm a master-hand to remember things, and what I read over and over in that 'are dog-hole of cabin never got clean out of my head, no, nor never will; and when the Lord above calls all hands on deck to pass muster, ef I'm ship-shape afore him, it'll be because I follered his signals and l'arnt 'em out of that 'are log. But I didn't foller 'em then, nor not for a plaguy long cruise yet! "One day, as I laid there readin' by the light of a bit of tallow dip the mate gave me, who should stick his head into the hole he called a cabin, but old Twist! He'd got an idee I was shammin'; and when he saw me with a book, he cussed, and swore, and raved, and finally hauled it out o' my hand and flung it up through the hatchway clean and clear overboard. "I tell ye, Doctor, if I'd 'a' had a sound arm, he'd 'a' gone after it; but I had to take it out in ratin' at him, and that night my mind was made up; I was bound to desart at the first land. And it come about that a fortnight after my arm had jined, and I could haul shrouds agin, we sighted the Marquesas, and bein' near about out o' water, the cap'en laid his course for the nearest land, and by daybreak of the second day we lay to in a small harbor, on the south side of an island where ships wa'n't very prompt to go commonly. But old Twist didn't care for cannibals nor wild beasts, when they stood in his way; and there wasn't but half a cask of water aboard, and that a hog wouldn't 'a' drank, only for the name on't. So we pulled ashore after some, and findin' a spring near by, was takin' it out, hand over hand, as fast as we could bale it up, when all of a sudden the mate see a bunch of feathers over a little bush near by, and yelled out to run for our lives, the savages was come.