Here was an awkward case, all for want
of a guide-post. Still, when one thinks of Kate's prosperous horoscope,
that after so long a voyage, _she_ only, out of the total crew,
was thrown on the American shore, with one hundred and five pounds in
her purse of clear gain on the voyage, a conviction arises that she
_could_ not guess wrongly. She might have tossed up, having coins
in her pocket, _heads or tails_? but this kind of sortilege was
then coming to be thought irreligious in Christendom, as a Jewish and a
Heathen mode of questioning the dark future. She simply guessed,
therefore; and very soon a thing happened which, though adding nothing
to strengthen her guess as a true one, did much to sweeten it if it
should prove a false one. On turning a point of the shore, she came
upon a barrel of biscuit washed ashore from the ship. Biscuit is about
the best thing I know, but it is the soonest spoiled; and one would
like to hear counsel on one puzzling point, why it is that a touch of
water utterly ruins it, taking its life, and leaving a _caput
mortuum_ corpse! Upon this _caput_ Kate breakfasted, though
_her_ case was worse than mine; for any water that ever plagued
_me_ was always fresh; now _hers_ was a present from the
Pacific ocean.
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