So, I have seen fit to
abridge it, and tell it in my own.
As a matter of fact, the questions Cora, her girl chums, or the boys
asked, only tended to throw more light on the strange affair, whereas
the interruptions of Ben himself were more dramatic. He was so
afraid that it was all a dream that, he would awaken from it only to
find himself alone again.
"But you are real, aren't you, now?" he would ask, pathetically.
"Of course," said Cora, with a gentle smile.
"And you won't go away and leave me, as the others did?" he begged,
but he did not couple Slim Jim with one of those. In fact, he did
not pay much attention to the negro, for which Jim, a rather
superstitious chap, was very grateful.
"Certainly we won't leave you here," Jack said. "We'll take you
wherever you want to go, Ben."
"That's good. Well, as I was saying--" and then he would resume his
interrupted narrative.
So, instead of telling his "yarn" in that fashion, I have sought to
save your time and interest by condensing it.
Up to the time of the hurricane, which caught the Ramona in rather a
bad stretch of water, there was nothing that need be set down. The
vessel bearing the mother of Jack and Cora, and the parents of the
Robinson twins, had gone on her way, until the sudden bursting of the
storm, with unusual tropical fury, had thrown the seas against and
over the craft with smashing fury.
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