"You yourself escaped on that occasion, I think."
It was true. Being usually the hero of my own stories, I commonly do
manage to live through one, in order to figure to advantage in the next.
It is from artistic necessity: no reader would take much interest in a
hero who was dead before the beginning of the tale. I endeavored to
explain this to Captain Abersouth. He shook his head.
"No," said he, "it's cowardly, that's the way I look at it."
Suddenly an effulgent idea began to dawn upon me, and I let it have its
way until my mind was perfectly luminous. Then I rose from my seat, and
frowning down into the upturned face of my accuser, spoke in severe and
rasping accents thus:
"Captain Abersouth, in the various perils you and I have encountered
together in the classical literature of the period, if I have always
escaped and you have always perished; if I lost you at sea in the
_Mudlark_, froze you into the ice at the South Pole in the _Camel_ and
drowned you in the _Nupple-duck_, pray be good enough to tell me whom I
have the honor to address."
It was a blow to the poor man: no one was ever so disconcerted. Flinging
aside his novel, he put up his hands and began to scratch his head and
think. It was beautiful to see him think, but it seemed to distress him
and pointing significantly over the side of the raft I suggested as
delicately as possible that it was time to act. He rose to his feet and
fixing upon me a look of reproach which I shall remember as long as I
can, cast himself into the deep. As to me--I escaped.