Upon the whole,
no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the
severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. I have
thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have
to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination,
than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of
fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity.
After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18--,
from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java,
on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as
passenger --having no other inducement than a kind of nervous
restlessness which haunted me as a fiend.
Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons,
copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was
freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had
also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of
opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently
crank.
We got under way with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stood
along the eastern coast of Java, without any other incident to beguile
the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of
the small grabs of the Archipelago to which we were bound.
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