"In order to get away from Cape Town, and at the same time follow my idea of settling down in some warm climate where a man can become a planter and have a lot of blacks do the work for him, I shipped before the mast on the Dutch bark _Java_, out of Amsterdam, bound for Batavia. This craft had put in short of water and several hands who had died on the passage down to the Cape. The _Java_ was unlucky. The most unlucky tub that ever sailed, except the _Flying Dutchman_, but unlucky enough for any real ship. We winds up in a typhoon, a hundred miles west of the Sunda Strait. The masts went by the board and at the end of the blow, after two days of pumping and praying, a steamer picks us up. She was bound for Singapore. The second mate of the steamer, a young fellow from London, decided he wanted to work the _Java_ into port, his idea being Anjer. The skipper says 'all right' and he called for volunteers. As I said, I was still a fool, so I joined five other men and with the young second mate we was put on board the _Java_; I was the only one of her own crew and this scared me. Them Dutchmen knew when they were well off; and they stayed aboard the steamer.
"The second mate of the steamer did not know exactly what to do. He said, 'We will get up a jury mast,' but there was nothing to make a jury mast out of. The steamer was far down on the horizon when we found by sounding the well that the old tub was gaining water fast. After that we did nothing but pump. We pumps for the best part of a week. I don't remember what we ate, or if we did not eat. The crowd on board curses our young skipper, and pumps. They kept on pumping because we found the long boat that we depended upon stove in and all of the thwarts smashed.
"At the end of the week another blow comes up from the West. 'So long, good old London Town,' one of our fellows sings out. 'The hell with dyin' tired,' and he drops the pump handle and sits down. We all do the same, and the second mate, who took his trick along with the rest, says, 'I guess you are right; we might as well rest a bit before swimming.'
"We rested all afternoon and till late at night. I had my wad in a pouch at my belt and each of us had two life belts. We ate a little; the young second mate found a small beaker of rum in the cabin and we had some of that, and some hard bread and a hunk of cheese. I drank very little rum; I was afraid of going to sleep.
