"I had a valuable cargo of general merchandise from the London
docks to Fort Churchill, a station of the old company on Hudson's
Bay," said the captain earnestly. "We were delayed in lading, and
baffled by head winds and a heavy tumbling sea all the way north-
about and across. Then the fog kept us off the coast; and when I
made port at last, it was too late to delay in those northern
waters with such a vessel and such a crew as I had. They cared for
nothing, and idled me into a fit of sickness; but my first mate was
a good, excellent man, with no more idea of being frozen in there
until spring than I had, so we made what speed we could to get
clear of Hudson's Bay and off the coast. I owned an eighth of the
vessel, and he owned a sixteenth of her. She was a full-rigged
ship, called the Minerva, but she was getting old and leaky. I
meant it should be my last v'y'ge in her, and so it proved. She
had been an excellent vessel in her day. Of the cowards aboard her
I can't say so much."
"Then you were wrecked?" I asked, as he made a long pause.
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