Wednesday the Tenth by Grant Allen

For the next two days we went steaming ahead as hard as we could go in a bee-line to the northeastward, in the direction of the Duke of Cumberland's Islands; and it was two days clear before those unfortunate boys, Jack and Martin -- for that was what they called one another for short, in spite of their severely theological second names -- were in a condition to tell us exactly what had happened, without danger to their shattered nerves and impaired digestions.

When they did manage to speak -- both at once, for choice, in their eagerness to get their story out -- here's about what their history came to, as we pieced it together, bit by bit, from the things they told us at different times. If I were one of those writing chaps, now, that know how to tell a whole ten years' history, end on end, exactly as it happened, without missing a detail, I'd get it all out for you just as Martin told us; or better still, I'd give it to you in a single connected piece, between inverted commas, as his own words, beginning, "I was born," said he, "in the city of Edinburgh," and so forth, after the regular high-and-dry literary fashion. But how on earth those clever book-making fellows can ever remember a whole long speech, word for word, from beginning to end, I never could make out and never shall, neither. What memories they must have to do it, to be sure!