blurred the other letters? Did not those suffice to tell the name of the ship and the port she belonged to? The Jane of Liverpool!
Captain Len Guy had taken the plank in his hands, and now he pressed his lips to it, while tears fell from his eyes.
It was a fragment of the Jane! I did not utter a word until the captain's emotion had subsided. As for Hunt, I had never seen such a lightning glance from his brilliant hawk-like eyes as he now cast towards the southern horizon.
Captain Len Guy rose.
Hunt, without a word, placed the plank upon his shoulder, and we continued our route.
When we had made the tour of the island, we halted at the place where the boat had been left under the charge of two sailors, and about half-past two in the afternoon we were again on board.
Early on the morning of the 23rd of December the Halbrane put off from Bennet Islet, and we carried away with us new and convincing testimony to the catastrophe which Tsalal Island had witnessed.
During that day, I observed the sea water very attentively, and it seemed to me less deeply blue than Arthur Pym describes it. Nor had we met a single specimen of his monster of the austral fauna, an animal three feet long, six inches high, with four short legs, long coral claws, a silky body, a rat's tail, a cat's head, the hanging ears, blood-red lips and white teeth of a dog. The truth is that I regarded several of these details as "suspect," and entirely due to an over-imaginative temperament.
Seated far aft in the ship, I read Edgar Poe's book with
