PRISONERS***





Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas Stories" edition by
David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





THE PERILS OF CERTAIN ENGLISH PRISONERS


CHAPTER I--THE ISLAND OF SILVER-STORE


It was in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-four,
that I, Gill Davis to command, His Mark, having then the honour to be a
private in the Royal Marines, stood a-leaning over the bulwarks of the
armed sloop Christopher Columbus, in the South American waters off the
Mosquito shore.

My lady remarks to me, before I go any further, that there is no such
christian-name as Gill, and that her confident opinion is, that the name
given to me in the baptism wherein I was made, &c., was Gilbert.  She is
certain to be right, but I never heard of it.  I was a foundling child,
picked up somewhere or another, and I always understood my christian-name
to be Gill.  It is true that I was called Gills when employed at
Snorridge Bottom betwixt Chatham and Maidstone t