CHAPTER XCIV.

Two weeks, since the date of the preceding chapter, have passed; we have slept our last, for long years to come, on the English soil. It is night; and Vivian has been admitted to an interview with his father. They have been together alone an hour and more, and I and my father will not disturb them. But the clock strikes--the hour is late--the ship sails to-night--we should be on board. And as we two stand below, the door opens in the room above, and a heavy step descends the stairs; the father is leaning on the son's arm. You should see how timidly the son guides the halting step. And now, as the light gleams on their faces, there are tears on Vivian's cheek; but the face of Roland seems calm and happy. Happy! when about to be separated, perhaps for ever, from his son? Yes, happy! because he has found a son for the first time; and is not thinking of years and absence, and the chance of death--but thankful for the Divine mercy, and cherishing celestial hope. If ye wonder why Roland is happy in such an hour, how vainly have I sought to make him breathe, and live, and move before you!

* * * * *

We are on board; our luggage all went first. I had had time, with the help of a carpenter, to knock up cabins for Vivian, Guy Bolding, and myself in the hold. For, thinking we could not too soon lay aside the pretensions of Europe--"_de_-fine-gentlemanise" ourselves, as Trevanion recommended--we had engaged steerage passage, to the great humouring of our finances. We had, too, the luxury to be by ourselves, and our own Cumberland folks were round us, as our friends and servants both.

We are on board, and have looked our last on those we are to leave, and we stand on deck leaning on each other. We are on board, and the lights, near and far, shine from the vast city; and the stars are on high, bright and clear, as for the first mariners of old. Strange noises, rough voices, and crackling cords, and here and there the sobs of women, mingling with the oaths of men. Now the swing and heave of the vessel--the dreary sense of exile that comes when the ship fairly moves over the waters. And still we stood, and looked, and listened; silent, and leaning on each other.

Night deepened, the city vanished--not a gleam from its myriad lights! The river widened and widened. How cold comes the wind!--is that a gale from the sea? The stars grow faint--the moon has sunk. And now, how desolate look the waters in the comfortless gray of dawn! Then we shivered and looked at each other, and muttered something that was not the thought deepest at our hearts, and crept into our berths--feeling sure it was not for sleep. And sleep came on us soft and kind. The ocean lulled the exiles as on a mother's breast.

JONATHAN IN AFRICA.[6]

A new school of novelists is evidently springing up on the western shores of the Atlantic. The pioneers are already in the field--and the main body, we suppose, will shortly follow. The style of these innovators seems a compound imitation of _Gulliver_, _Munchausen_, _The Arabian Nights_, and _Robinson Crusoe_; the ingredients being mixed in capricious proportions, well stirred, seasoned with Yankee bulls and scraps of sea-slang, and served hot--sometimes plain, at others with a _hors d'oeuvre_ of puffs. We know not how such queer ragouts affect the public palate; but we are inclined to prefer dishes of an older fashion. Mr Herman Melville, of New York and the Pacific Ocean, common sailor, first introduced the new-fangled kickshaw. This young gentleman has most completely disappointed us. Two or three years ago, he published two small volumes of sea-faring adventure and island-rambles, of which we thought more highly than of any first appearance of the kind we for a long time had witnessed. In the pages of Maga, where praise is never lightly or lavishly bestowed, we said as much; and were glad to hope that Typee and Omoo were but an earnest of even better things. And, therefore, sadly were we disgusted on perusal of a rubbishing rhapsody, entitled _Mardi, and a Voyage Thither_. We sat down to it with glee and self-gratulation, and through about half a volume we got on pleasantly enough. The author was afloat; and although we found little that would bear comparison with the fine vein of nautical fun and characteristic delineation which we had enjoyed on board the Little Jule, and afterwards at Tahiti, yet there was interest--strong interest at times; and a scene on board a deserted vessel was particularly exciting,--replete with power of a peculiar and uncommon kind. But this proved a mere flash in the pan--the ascent of the rocket which was soon to fall as a stick. An outlandish young female, one Miss Yillah, makes her first appearance: Taji, the hero and narrator of the yarn, reaches a cluster of fabulous islands, where the jealous queen Hautia opens a floral correspondence with him: where the plumed and turbaned Yoomy sings indifferent doggerel; and Philosopher Babbalanja unceasingly doth prose; and the Begum of Pimminee holds drawing-rooms, which are attended by the Fanfums, and the Diddledees, and the Fiddlefies, and a host of other insular magnates, with names equally elegant, euphonious, and significant. Why, what trash is all this!--mingled, too, with attempts at a Rabelaisian vein, and with strainings at smartness--the style of the whole being affected, pedantic, and wearisome exceedingly. We are reminded, by certain parts of _Mardi_, of Foote's nonsense about the nameless lady who "went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie;" and at whose wedding the Joblilies, and the Picninnies, and the Great Panjandrum, danced till the gunpowder ran out at their boot-heels. Foote wrote his absurd paragraph, we believe, to try a friend's memory; Mr Melville has evidently written his unintelligible novel to try the public's patience. Of three things we are certain, namely, that the Panjandrum story is quite as easy to understand as _Mardi_; that it is much more diverting; and, the chief advantage of all, an infinite deal shorter.

[6] _Kaloolah, or Journeyinqs to the Djébel Kumri: an Autobiography of Jonathan Romer._ Edited by W. S. MAYO, M.D. London: 1849.

_Mardi_, which we dismissed from our mind when we closed it with a yawn a day or two after its publication, has been recalled to our memory by another book, also proceeding from America, although published in London; and which, like Mr Melville's romance, blends the real and the possible with the ideal and the fantastic. _Kaloolah_ (Heaven help these Yankee nomenclators) professes to be the autobiography of Jonathan Romer, a young Nantucket sailor, to whose narrative, during his absence in the interior of Africa, one of his countrymen, Dr W. S. Mayo, obligingly acts as editor. Most readers will probably be of opinion that the American M.D. might claim a nearer interest in the literary bantling--the first-born, we apprehend, of his own pen and imagination. But our business is with the book, and not with the author, whose name, whether Romer or Mayo, is as yet unknown to fame, but who need not despair of achieving reputation. _Kaloolah_ combines with certain faults, which may presently be indicated, some very excellent qualities, and has several chapters, whereof any one contains more real good stuff, and ingenuity, and amusement, than the whole of the second and third volumes of _Mardi_, reduced to a concentrated essence. Besides, it is manifest that the two books must be viewed and judged differently--one as a first, and by no means unpromising attempt; the other, as the backsliding performance of a man who has proved himself capable of far better things.

Before commencing his own story, young Jonathan Romer introduces us to his ancestors, and asserts his right to a life of adventure. "Descended on both sides of the house from some of the earliest settlers of Nantucket, and more or less intimately related to the Coffins, the Folgers, the Macys, and the Starbucks of that adventurous population, it would seem that I had a natural right to a roving disposition, and to a life of peril, privation, and vicissitude. Nearly all the male members of my family, for several generations, have been followers of the sea: some of them in the calm and peaceful employment of the merchant-service; others, and by far the greater number, in the more dangerous pursuit of the ocean monster." After relating some of the feats of his family, and glancing at his own childhood, which gave early indications of the bold and restless spirit that animated him at a mature period, Jonathan presents himself to his readers at the age of eighteen--a stalwart stripling and idle student; the best rider, shot, swimmer, and leaper for many miles around, with little taste for books, and a very decided one for rambling in the woods with rifle and rod. At this time the academy, of which he had for four years been an inmate, is nearly broken up by what is called "a revival of religion;" in other words, a violent fit of fanatical enthusiasm, provoked and fed by Baptist and Methodist preachers. Pupils and teachers alike go mad with fervent zeal, classes are at an end, unceasing prayer is substituted for study, and Jonathan, who ls one of the few unregenerated, walks into the forest, and knocks the head off a partridge with a rifle-ball. The bird is picked up, and the excellence of the aim applauded by an old trapper and hunter, Joe Downs by name, well known along the shores of the Rackett and Grass rivers, in the northern and uninhabited part of the state of New York. Joe is not the wild, semi-Indian trapper of the south and west, whom Sealsfield and Ruxton have so graphically sketched; there is as much difference between the two characters as between a sailor in the coasting trade and a Pacific Ocean beachcomber. There is nothing of the half-horse, half-alligator style about Joe, whose manner is so mild, and his coat so decent, that he has been taken for a country parson. He despises the Redskins, sets no value on their scalps, and would not shed their blood, except in self-defence. How he had once been thus compelled to do so, he relates to Jonathan in the course of their first conversation.

"It was the way towards Tupper's lake. There had been a light fall of snow, and I was scouting round, when I happened to make a circumbendibus, and came across my own track, and there I saw the marks of an Indian's foot right on my trail. Thinks I, that is kind of queer; the fellow must have been following me; howsomever I'll try him, and make sure; so I made another large circle, and again struck my own track, and there was the tarnal Indian's foot again. Says I, this won't do; I must find out what this customer wants, and how he'll have it. So I stopped short, and soon got sight of him; he knew that I saw him, so he came along up, in the most friendly manner you can think. But I didn't like his looks; he was altogether too darned glad to see me. He had no gun, but he had an almighty long-handled tomahawk, and a lot of skins and real traps. Thinks I, may be, old fellow, your gun has burst, or you've pawned it for rum, and you can't raise skins enough to redeem it, and you want mine, and perhaps you'll get it.

"At last I grew kind of nervous; I knew the fellow would hatchet me if I gave him a chance, and yet I didn't want to shoot him right down just on suspicion. But I thought, if I let him cut my throat first, it would be too late to shoot him afterwards. So I concluded that the best way would be to give him a chance to play his hand; and if so be he'd lead the wrong card, why I should have a right to take the trick. Just then, at the right time, a partridge flew into a clump that stood five or six rods off. So I kind of 'noeuvred round a little. I drew out my ramrod, as if to feel whether the ball in my rifle was well down; but instead of returning it again, I kept it in my hand, and, without letting the vagabond see me, I got out a handful of powder. I then sauntered off to the bush, shot the partridge, and in an instant passed my hand over the muzzle of my rifle, and dropped the powder in. I picked up the bird, and then just took and run my ramrod right down upon the powder. Now, he thought, was his chance before I loaded my gun again. He came towards me with his hatchet in his hand. I saw that he was determined to act wicked, and began to back off; he still came on. I lowered my rifle, and told him to keep away. He raised his tomahawk, gave one yell, and bounded right at me. When he was just about three or four feet from the muzzle, I fired. You never see a fellow jump so. He kicked his heels up in the air, and came down plump on his head, dead as Julius Cæsar. He never winked; the ramrod--a good, hard, tough piece of hickory--had gone clean through him, and stuck out about two feet from his back. Served him right; didn't it?"

The old trapper urges Jonathan to accompany him on an expedition into the woods, promising, as an inducement, to put him "right alongside the biggest catamount he has ever seen," and to let him fight it out, with rifle, hatchet, and knife, without making or meddling in the contest. He also pledges himself to show him a fishpond, "where the youngest infants, of a genteel pickerelto family, weigh at least three pounds." Such inducements are irresistible. Jonathan packs up a brace of blankets and his shooting and fishing fixings, and goes off in the canoe with Joe Downs on a pleasant up-stream cruise, enlivened by a succession of beautiful scenery, and by the varied and original conversation of his companion. On their way they fell in with a party of Indians, amongst them one Blacksnake, a brother of the gentleman whom Joe had spitted on his ramrod. He suspects Joe of having shot his kinsman, and Joe strongly suspects him of having already attempted to revenge his death.

"'I was leaning out of the second story doorway of Jones's shop one day,' said Joe, 'looking across the river, when, whizz, a rifle bullet came and buried itself in the doorpost. I hain't the least doubt that that very identical Blacksnake sent it. Thank God, his aim was not as his will! He's a bad chap. Why, I really believe it was he who murdered my old friend Dan White the trapper. If I only knew it was the fact, I wish I may be stuck, forked end uppermost, in a coon hole, if I wouldn't send a ball through his painted old braincase, this 'ere very identical minute. Darn your skin!' energetically growled Joe, shaking his fist at the distant canoe."

It would have saved Mr Downs some trouble and suffering if he had yielded to the impulse, and expended half-an-ounce of lead upon Blacksnake, who, about a week later, sneaks up, with two companions, to the trapper's pine-log fire, and shoots the unfortunate Joe, but is shot down himself, the very next moment, by Jonathan Romer, whose double-barrel settles two of the murderers, and then descends with crushing force upon the cranium of the third. Joe not being dead, although very badly wounded, his young companion conveys him to a cave, whose hidden entrance the trapper had revealed to him the previous day, and there tends him till he is able to bear removal. With his committal to the hands of a village surgeon, Mr Romer's backwoods adventures terminate, a source of regret to the reader, since they are more lively and attractive than some subsequent portions of the book, evidently deemed by the author more interesting and important, and therefore dwelt upon at greater length. Indeed it is our opinion that the author of _Kaloolah_ is mistaken, as young authors constantly are, in the real scope and nature of his own abilities, and that he would shine much more in a novel of backwoods life, or nautical adventure, than in the mixed style he has selected for his first attempt, which is a sort of mosaic, distinguished rather for variety and vividness of colour than for harmony and regularity of design.

Jonathan reaches home in time to receive the last adieu of his mother, a worthy but eccentric old lady, who had fitted out her son, on his departure for school, with a winding-sheet, amongst other necessaries, that he might be buried decently should he die far from his friends, and that he might be reminded of his mortality as often as he emptied his trunk. It was a curious conceit, but, as Jonathan observes, she was from Nantucket, and they are all queer people there, and filial affection induced him long to preserve the shroud. Mrs Romer dead, her son applies to the study of surgery, gets himself into trouble by a body-snatching exploit, has to levant to New York, and there, finding he is still in danger from the friends of the disinterred corpse, who have set the police upon his track, ships himself on board the fine fore-topsail schooner, "Lively Anne," bound for the Western Islands, and commanded by Captain Coffin, an old shipmate of his father's. In this smart little craft, he sees some country and more water, until, upon the voyage from the Azores to Malaga, a white squall or a waterspout--which of the two he could never ascertain--capsizes the schooner and dashes him senseless down the hatchway, whence he was just emerging, in alarm at the sudden uproar on deck. On recovering himself, he finds the vessel dismasted, the deck swept of all its fixtures, and the captain and crew missing. Doubtless they had been hurled into the waves by the same terrible force that had shattered the bulwarks and carried away boats, casks, and galley. The horizon was now clear, not a sail was in sight, and Jonathan Romer was alone on a helpless wreck in the middle of the wide ocean. But he was a man of resource and mettle, whom it was hard to discourage or intimidate; and finding the schooner made no water, he righted her as well as he could, and resigned himself to float at the will of the wind until he should meet a rescuing sail. This did not occur for some weeks, during which he floated past Teneriffe in the night, within hail of fishermen, who would not approach him for fear of the quarantine laws. At last, sitting over his solitary dinner, he perceived a ship heading up for the schooner.

"As she came on, I had full time to note all her beautiful proportions. She was small, apparently not above 300 tons, and had a peculiarly trim and clipper-like look. Her bright copper, flashing occasionally in the sunlight, showed that she was in light sailing trim; whilst from the cut of her sails, the symmetrical arrangement of her spars and rigging, and her quarter-boats, I concluded she must be a man-of-war. Passing me about half a mile astern, she stood on for a little distance, then, hoisting the bilious-looking flag of Spain, she tacked and ran for me, backing her main-topsail within twenty yards of my larboard beam. Her quarter-boat was immediately lowered, and half-a-dozen fellows, in red caps and flannel shirts, jumped into it, followed by an officer in a blue velvet jacket, with a strip of gold lace upon his shoulders, and a broad-brimmed straw hat upon his head. I ran below, stuffed all the money that I had in gold--about a thousand dollars--into my pockets, and got upon deck again just as the boat touched the side."

The precaution was a good one: the saucy Bonito, Pedro Garbez master, was bound from Cuba to the coast of Africa, with a cut-throat crew and an empty slave-deck. Owing to an accident, she had sailed without a surgeon, and Romer was well received and treated so soon as his profession was known. When he discovered the ship's character, he would gladly have left her, but means were wanting, for the Bonito loved not intercourse with passing craft, and touched nowhere until she reached her destination--Cabenda Bay, on the western coast of Africa. There being no slaves at Cabenda, it was resolved to run a few miles up the Congo river.

"We at length reached Loonbee, and anchored off the town, which is the chief market or slave-depot for Embomma. It consists of about a hundred huts of palm-leaves, with two or three block-houses, where the slaves are confined. About two hundred slaves were already collected, and more were on their way down the river, and from different towns in the interior. After presents for the King of Embomma, and for the Mafooka (a sort of chief of the board of slave-trade,) and other officials, had been made, and a deal of brandy drunk, we landed, and in company with several Fukas, or native merchants, and two or three Portuguese, went to take a look at the slaves. Each dealer paraded his gang for inspection, and loudly dilated upon their respective qualities. They were all entirely naked, and of all ages, sexes, and conditions, and all had an air of stolid indifference, varied only in some of them by an expression of surprise and fear at sight of the white men."

In one of these unfortunate groups of dingy humanity, Romer was struck by the appearance of a young girl, whose features widely differed from the usual African stamp, and whose complexion, amongst a white population, would not have been deemed too dark for a brunette. Her gracefully curling hair contrasted with the woolly polls of her companions; her eyes were large and expressive, and her form elegant, but then emaciated by fatigue and ill-treatment. This is Kaloolah. On inquiry of the slave-dealer, a great burly negro, wielding a long thong of plaited buffalo hide, Romer learned that she is of a far distant nation, called the Gerboo Blanda, who dwell in stone houses on an extensive plain. The slave-dealer knows them only by report, and Kaloolah and her brother, who is near at hand, are the first specimens he has seen of this remote tribe. He had bought her two months' journey off, and then she had already come a long distance. And now that he had got them to the coast, he esteems them of small value compared to the full-blooded blacks; for Kaloolah has pined herself away to a shadow, and her brother, Enphadde, is bent upon suicide, and cannot be trusted with unfettered hands; so that for thirty dollars Romer buys them both. The Bonito having been driven out to sea by the approach of a British cruiser, he passes some days on shore with his new purchases; during which time, with a rapidity bordering on the miraculous, he acquires sufficient of their language, and they of his, to carry on a sort of piebald conversation, to learn the history of these pale Africans, and some particulars of their mysterious country.

"The Gerboo Blanda, I found, was a name given to their country by the Jagas, that its true name was Framazugda, and that the people were called Framazugs. That it was situated at a great distance in the interior, in a direction west by north, and that it was surrounded by negro and savage nations, through whom a trade was carried on with people at the north-west and east, none of whom, however, were ever seen at Framazugda, as the trade had to pass through a number of hands. Enphadde represented the country to be of considerable extent, consisting mostly of a lofty plateau or elevated plain, and exceedingly populous, containing numerous large cities, surrounded by high walls, and filled with houses of stone. Several large streams and lakes watered the soil, which, according to his account, was closely cultivated, and produced in abundance the greatest variety of trees, fruits, flowers, and grain. Over this country ruled Selha Shounsé, the father of Enphadde and Kaloolah, as king. It was in going from the capital to one of the royal gardens that their escort was attacked by a party of blacks from the lowlands, the attendants killed or dispersed, and the young prince and princess carried off."

Thirty dollars could hardly be deemed a heavy price for the son and daughter of the great Shounsé, and Jonathan was well pleased with his bargain, although it was not yet clear how he should realise a profit; but meanwhile it was something to be the proprietor of their royal highnesses of Framazugda; something too to gaze into Kaloolah's bright black eyes, and listen to her dulcet tones, as she warbled one of her country's ditties about the Fultul, a sweet-scented lily flourishing beside the rivulets of her native mountains. The verses, by the bye, are not to be commended in Mr Romer's version; they perhaps sounded better in the original Framazug, and when issuing from the sweet lips of Kaloolah.

Instead of a week, the Bonito was month absent, having been caught in a calm. Captain Pedro Garbez promised the Virgin Mary the value of a young negro in wax-lights for a capful of wind, but in vain; and he was fain to tear the hair from his head with impatience. Meanwhile Jonathan had caught a fever in the swamps of Congo, and Kaloolah had made his chicken-broth, and tended him tenderly, and restored him to health, although he was still so altered in appearance that Garbez knew him not when he mounted the side of the slaver. All speed was now made to buy and ship a cargo. The account of the latter process is interesting, and, we have no doubt, perfectly authentic; for although the author of _Kaloolah_ has chosen to interlard, and perhaps deteriorate his book by strange stories of imaginary countries, animals, flowers, &c., it is not difficult to distinguish between his fact and his fiction, and to recognise the internal evidence of veracity and personal observation. A short extract may here with propriety be made, for the benefit of anti-slavery philanthropists.

"The first slaves that came on board were taken below the berth-deck, and arranged upon a temporary slave-deck placed over the water-casks, and at a distance of not more than three feet and a half from the deck overhead.... The slaves were arranged in four ranks. When lying down, the heads of the two outer ranks touched the sides of the ship, their feet pointing inboard or athwart the vessel. They, of course, occupied a space fore and aft the ship, of about six feet on either side, or twelve feet of the whole breadth. At the feet of the outside rank came the heads of the inner row. They took up a space of six feet more on either side, or together twelve feet. There was still left a space running up and down the centre of the deck, two or three feet in breadth; along this were stretched single slaves, between the feet of the two inner rows, so that, when all were lying down, almost every square foot of the deck was covered with a mass of human flesh. Not the slightest space was allowed between the individuals of the ranks, but the whole were packed as closely as they could be, each slave having just room enough to stretch himself out flat upon his back, and no more. In this way about two hundred and fifty were crowded upon the slave-deck, and as many more upon the berth-deck. Horrible as this may seem, it was nothing compared to the 'packing' generally practised by slavers. Captain Garbez boasted that he had tried both systems, tight packing and loose packing, thoroughly, and found the latter the best.

"'If you call this loose packing,' I replied, 'have the goodness to explain what you mean by tight packing?'

"'Why, tight packing consists in making a row sit with their legs stretched apart, and then another row is placed between their legs, and so on, until the whole deck is filled. In the one case each slave has as much room as he can cover lying; in the other only as much room as he can occupy sitting. With tight packing this craft ought to stow fifteen hundred.'"

The Bonito was not above three hundred tons. Such are the blessings for which the negroes are indebted to the tender-mercied emancipators who have ruined our West Indian colonies.

"'When it comes to closing the hatches,' (in the event of a gale) said Captain Pedro, 'it is all up with the voyage. You can hardly save enough to pay expenses. They die like leeches in a thunderstorm. I was once in a little schooner with three hundred on board, and we were compelled to lie-to for three days. It was the worst sea I ever saw, and came near swamping us several times. We lost two hundred and fifty slaves in that gale. We couldn't get at the dead ones to throw them overboard very handily, and so those that didn't die from want of air were killed by the rolling and tumbling about of the corpses. Of the living ones some had their limbs broken, and every one had the flesh of his leg worn to the bone, by the shackle irons.'

"'Good God! and you still pursue the horrible trade?'

"'Certainly; why not? Despite of accidents the trade is profitable, and, for the cruelty of it, no one is to blame except the English. Were it not for them, large and roomy vessels would be employed, and it would be an object to bring the slaves over with every comfort, and in as good condition as possible. Now, every consideration must be sacrificed to the one great object--escape from capture by the British cruisers.'

"I had no wish to reply to the captain's argument. One might as well reply to a defence of blasphemy or murder. Giddy, faint, and sick, I turned with loathing from the fiends in human guise, and sought the more genial companionship of the inmates of my state-room."

These were Kaloolah and Enphadde. To conceal the beauty of the former, perilous amidst the lawless crew of the slaver, Jonathan had marked her face with caustic, producing black spots which had the appearance of disease. This temporary disfigurement secured her from licentious outrage, but not from harsh treatment. Monte, second captain of the Bonito, was an ex-pirate, whose vessel had been destroyed by Yankee cruisers. To spite Romer, whom he detested as an American, he threatened to send Kaloolah and her brother amongst the slaves, and took every opportunity of abusing them. Chapter xxi. passes wholly on board the slaver, and is excellent of its kind. The Bonito is chased by a man-of-war, but escapes. At daybreak, whilst lying in his berth, Romer hears a bustle on deck, followed by shrill cries and plunges in the water. The following is good:--

"I jumped from my berth and stepped out upon deck. A dense fog brooded upon the surface of the ocean, and closely enveloped the ship--standing up on either side, like huge perpendicular walls of granite, and leaving a comparatively clear space--the area of the deck and the height of the main-topmast crosstrees. Inboard, the sight ranged nearly free fore-and-aft the ship, but seaward no eye could penetrate, more than a yard or two, the solid-looking barrier of vapour. A man standing on the taffrail might have seen the catheads the whole length of the deck, whilst at the same time, behind him, the end of the spanker boom, projecting over the water, was lost in the mist. I looked up at the perpendicular walls and the lofty arch overhead with feelings of awe, and, I may add, fear. Cursed, indeed, must be our craft, when the genius of the mist so carefully avoided the pollution of actual contact. His rolling legions were close around us, but vapoury horse and misty foot shrank back affrighted from the horrors of our blood-stained decks."

The phenomenon was doubtless attributable to the hot air generated in the crowded 'tween-decks. The cries and plashings that had startled Jonathan were soon explained. Virulent ophthalmia raged on board, and Monte was drowning the blind, whose value of course departed with their eyesight. A blind slave was "an encumbrance, an unsaleable article, a useless expense. Pitch him overboard! Twenty-five to-day, and a dozen more to-morrow!" But retribution was at hand, threatened, at least, by a British brig-of-war, which appeared when the fog cleared, at about a mile and a half to windward. During the chase, Monte, casually jostled by Kaloolah, struck her to the deck, and a furious scuffle ensued between him and Jonathan, who at last, seeing some of the crew approaching, knife in hand, leaped overboard, dragging his antagonist with him, and followed by Enphadde and Kaloolah. After a deep dive, during which Monte's tenacious grasp was at last relaxed, the intrepid Jonathan regained the surface, where he and his friends and enemy easily supported themselves till picked up by the brig. The swift slaver escaped. Monte was put in irons, Romer and his Framazugdan friends were made much of by Captain Halsey and the officers of her Majesty's brig Flyaway, and landed in the picturesque but pestilent shores of Sierra Leone. Then Kaloolah and her brother propose to seek their way homewards, and Jonathan takes ship for Liverpool. Previously to his departure, there are some love passages between the Yankee and the Princess of Framazugda. These are not particularly successful. Sentiment is not Dr Mayo's _forte_: he is much happier in scenes of bustle and adventure--when urging his weary dromedary across boundless tracts of sand, or waging deadly combat with the fierce inmates of African jungles. His book will delight Mr Van Amburgh. There is a duel between a lion and a boa that we make no doubt of seeing dramatised at Astley's, as soon as a serpent can be tamed sufficiently for the performance. That Dr Mayo's lions are of the very first magnitude, the following description shows:--"His body was hardly less in size than that of a dray-horse; his paw as large as the foot of an elephant; while his head!--what can be said of such a head? Concentrate the fury, the power, the capacity, and the disposition for evil of a dozen thunderstorms into a round globe about two feet in diameter, and one would then be able to get an idea of the terrible expression of that head and face, enveloped and set off as it was by the dark framework of bristling mane!" This pleasing quadruped, disturbed in its forest solitude by the advent of Jonathan and the fair Kaloolah, who have wandered, lover-like, to some distance from their bivouac, at once prepares to breakfast upon them. Jonathan had imprudently laid down his gun to pluck wild honeysuckles for his mistress, when the lion, stepping in, cuts him off from his weapon. Suddenly "the light figure of Kaloolah rushed past me: 'Fly, fly, Jon'than!' she wildly exclaimed, as she dashed forward directly towards the lion. Quick as thought, I divined her purpose, and sprang after her, grasping her dress, and pulling her forcibly back, almost from within those formidable jaws. The astonished animal gave several jumps sideways and backwards, and stopped, crouching to the ground, and growling and lashing his sides with renewed fury. It was clearly taken aback by our unexpected charge upon him, but yet was not to be frightened into abandoning his prey. His mouth was made up for us, and there could be no doubt, if his motions _were_ a little slow, that he considered us as good as gorged." Pulling back Kaloolah, and drawing his knife, Romer awaits, with desperate determination, the monster's terrible onslaught, when an unexpected ally arrives to the rescue. "It seemed as if one of the gigantic creepers I have mentioned had suddenly quitted the canopy above, and, endowed with life and a huge pair of widely distended jaws, had darted with the rapidity of lightning upon the crouching beast. There was a tremendous shaking of the treetops, and a confused wrestling and jumping and whirling over and about, amid a cloud of upturned roots and earth and leaves, accompanied with the most terrific roars and groans. As I looked again, vision grew more distinct. An immense body, gleaming with purple, green, and gold, appeared convoluted around the majestic branches overhead, and, stretching down, was turned two or three times around the struggling lion, whose head and neck were almost concealed from sight within the cavity of a pair of jaws still more capacious than his own." A full-grown boa, whose length is estimated by Mr Romer at about a hundred feet, (much less than many he subsequently saw, but still "a very respectable-sized snake,") had dropped a few fathoms of coil from the gigantic tree around which he was twined, and enveloped the lion, who soon was crushed to death in the scaly embrace. Jonathan makes no doubt that the serpent was about to swallow his victim whole, according to the custom of his kind; and it is certainly to be regretted that the entreaties of Kaloolah, combined with the "strong sickly odour" diffused by the boa, prevented his remaining to witness a process of deglutition which, considering the dimensions of the morsel to be swallowed, could not have been otherwise than curious.

Wrecked a second time, Romer again reaches the coast of Africa, in company with an old sailor named Jack Thompson. They fall into the hands of the Bedouins, and suffer much ill treatment, an account of which, and of various adventures and escapes, occupy many chapters, and would have borne a little curtailment. Romer is wandering about with a tribe, upon whom he has passed himself off as an Arab from a distant region, when he is compelled to join in an attack on a caravan. Kaloolah is amongst the prisoners. She has been captured by a party of slave-hunters, and is on her way to Morocco, where her master hopes her beauty will fetch a good price from the Emperor Muley Abderrahman. In the partition of the spoil, she falls to the share of an old Arab, who is ill satisfied with the acquisition. "He was extremely chagrined at the turn of fortune which threatened to throw into the wrangling elements of his domestic felicity a feminine superfluity--or, as he expressed it, 'another tongue in his tent.'

"'Bismillah!' he exclaimed; 'God is great, but this is a small thing! She is not a man; she is not a black--she cannot work; but won't she eat and talk! They all eat and talk. I take a club sometimes, and knock them down; beat them; break their bones; but they still eat and talk! God's will be done! but it is too much to put such a thing upon me for my share! She is good for nothing: I cannot sell her.'"

The grumbling old Bedouin did sell her, however, to Jonathan, for three or four cotton shirts. Flight now becomes necessary, for Hassan, son of the chief of the tribe, seeks Jonathan's life, and Mrs Ali, the chief's wife, persecutes him with her misplaced affection, and is spiteful to Kaloolah, whom she looks upon as the chief obstacle to its requital. Upon this head our Yankee is rather good: "Respect for the sex," he says, "and a sentiment of gentlemanly delicacy, which the reader will appreciate, prevents me from dwelling upon the story at length. It was wrong, undoubtedly, in Seffora to love any other than her old, rugose-faced, white-bearded husband; but it is not for me to blame her. One thing, however, in her conduct can hardly be excused. True, I might have treated her affection with more tenderness; I might have nursed the gentle flowers of passion, instead of turning away from their fragrance; I might have responded to that 'yearning of the soul for sympathy'--have relieved, with the food of love, 'the mighty hunger of the heart;' but all this, and more that I might have done, but did not do, gave her no right to throw stones at Kaloolah." To avoid the pelting and other disagreeables, the lovers take themselves off in the night-time, mounted on _heiries_--camels of a peculiar breed and excellence, famed in the desert for endurance and speed. On their road they pick up, in a Moorish village, an Irish renegade; at some salt-works, they find Jack Thompson working as a slave; and soon afterwards their party is increased to five persons, by the addition of Hassan, a runaway negro. With this motley tail, Mr Romer pushes on in the direction of Framazugda. Here the editor very judiciously epitomises six long chapters in as many pages; and, immediately after this compressed portion, there begins what may be strictly termed the fabulous, or almost the supernatural part of the book. Previously to this there have been not a few rather startling incidents, but now the author throws the rein on the neck of his imagination, and scours away into the realms of the extravagant; still striving, however, by circumstantial detail, to give an appearance of probability to his astounding and ingenious inventions. Some of the descriptions of scenery and savage life in the wilderness are vivid and striking, and show power which might be better applied. Of the fabulous animals, the following account of an amiable reptile, peculiar to central Africa, will serve as a sufficient specimen of Yankee natural history:--

"It is an amphibious polypus. If the reader will conceive a large cart-wheel, the _hub_ will represent the body of the animal, and the spokes the long arms, about the size and shape of a full-grown kangaroo's tail, and twenty in number, that project from it. When the animal moves upon land, it stiffens these radii, and rolls over upon the points like a wheel without a felloe. These arms have also _the capability of a lateral prehensile contraction in curves, perpendicular to its plane of revolution_, and enable the animal to grasp its prey, and draw it into its voracious mouth. It attacks the largest animals, and even man itself; but, if dangerous upon land, it is still more formidable in the water, where it has been known to attack and kill an alligator. This horrible monster is known by the name of the Sempersough or 'snake-star,' and is more dreaded than any other animal of Framazugda, inasmuch as the natives have no way of destroying it, except by catching it when young, in cane traps sunk in the water, and baited with hippopotamus cubs(!) Fortunately it is not very prolific; and its increase is further prevented by the furious contests that these animals have among themselves. Sometimes twenty or thirty will grasp each other with their long arms, and twist themselves up into a hard and intricate knot. In this situation they remain, hugging and gnawing each other to death; and never relaxing their grasp until their arms are so firmly intertwined that, when life is extinct, and the huge mass floats, they cannot be separated. The natives now draw the ball ashore, cut it up with axes, and make it into a compost for their land." (!!)

Is Dr Mayo addicted to heavy suppers? We can just fancy an unfortunate individual, after a midnight meal on a shield of brawn and a Brobdingnagian crab, which he has omitted to qualify by a subsequent series of stiff tumblers, sinking into an uneasy slumber, and being rolled over by such an incubus as this vivacious waggon-wheel. Doubtless there is a possibility of a man dieting himself into this style of writing, whereof a short specimen may excite a smile, but whose frequent recurrence is necessarily wearisome, and which obviously escapes criticism. But the author of _Kaloolah_ is not contented with brute monstrosities. He chronicles reports that reach his hero's ears, of nations of human monsters, with teeth filed to a sharp point (no uncommon practice amongst certain negro tribes,) with tusks projecting like those of a wild boar, and with pendant lips that continually drop blood. All this is childish enough; but Jack Thompson, who is a dry dog, caps these astounding fictions with a cannibal yarn from the Southern Hemisphere.

"'I've been among the New Zealanders,' quoth Jack, 'and there they use each other for fresh grub, as regular as boiled duff in a man-of-war's mess. They used to eat their fathers and mothers, when they got too old to take care of themselves; but now they've got to be more civilised, and so they only eat rickety children, and slaves, and enemies taken in battle.'

"'A decided instance of the progress of improvement, and march of mind,' said I.

"'Well, I believe that is what the missionaries call it,' replied Jack; 'but it's a bad thing for the old folks. They don't take to the new fashion--they are in favour of the good old custom. I never see'd the thing myself; but Bill Brown, a messmate of mine once, told me that, when he was at the Bay of Islands, he see'd a great many poor old souls going about with tears in their eyes, trying to get somebody to eat them. One of them came off to the ship, and told them that he couldn't find rest in the stomachs of any of his kindred, and wanted to know if the crew wouldn't take him in. The skipper told him he was on monstrous short allowance, but he couldn't accommodate him. The poor old fellow, Bill said, looked as though his heart would break. There were plenty of sharks round the ship, and the skipper advised him to jump overboard; but he couldn't bear the idea of being eaten raw.'"

The great audacity of Dr Mayo's fictions preclude surprise at the boldness of his tropes and similes. The tails of his lions lash the ground "with a sound like the falling of clods upon a coffin;" their roar is like the boom of a thirty-two pounder, shaking the trees, and rattling the boulders in the bed of the river. Of course, allowance must be made for the vein of humorous rhodomontade peculiar to certain American writers, and into which Dr Mayo sometimes unconsciously glides, and, at others, voluntarily indulges. His description of the conjuring tricks of the Framazugdan jugglers comes under the latter head.

"Some of them were truly wonderful, as, for instance, turning a man into a tree bearing fruit, and with monkeys skipping about in the branches; and another case, where the chief juggler apparently swallowed five men, ten boys, and a jackass, threw them all up again, turned himself inside out, blew himself up like a balloon, and, exploding with a loud report, disappeared in a puff of luminous vapour. I could not but admire the skill with which the tricks were performed, although I was too much of a Yankee to be much astonished at anything in the _Hey, Presto!_ line."

A countryman of Mr Jefferson Davis is not expected to feel surprise at anything in the way of sleight of hand, or "double shuffle;" and there was probably nothing more startling to the senses in the evaporation of King Shounsé's conjuror, than in the natural self-extinction of the Mississippian debt. It is only a pity that Jonathan Romer did not carry his smart fellow-citizen to the country of the _Pholdefoos_, a class of enthusiasts who devote their lives to a search for the germs of moral, religious, and political truth. Mr Davis would have felt rather out of his element at first, but could not have failed ultimately to have benefited by his sojourn amongst these singular savages.

On coming in sight of her father's capital, Kaloolah is overcome with emotion, and sinks weeping into her brother's arms. "I felt," says Jonathan, "that this was a situation in which even the most sympathising lover would be _de trop_. There were thronging associations which I could not share, vibrating memories to which my voice was not attuned, bonds of affection which all-powerful love might transcend, and even disrupt, but whose precise nature it could not assume. There are some lovers who are jealous of such things--fellows who like to wholly monopolise a woman, and who are constantly on the watch, seizing and appropriating her every look, thought, and feeling, with somewhat of the same notion of an exclusive right, as that with which they pocket a tooth-pick. I am not of that turn. The female heart is as curiously and as variously stocked as a country dry-goods store. A man may be perhaps allowed to select out, for his own exclusive use, some of the heavier articles, such as sheetings, shirtings, flannels, trace-chains, hobby-horses, and goose-yokes; but that is no reason why the neighbours should be at once cut off from their accustomed supply of small-wares."

We venture to calculate that it takes a full-blooded Yankee to write in this strain, which, reminds us, remotely, it is true, of some of Mr Samuel Slick's eccentric fancies. Dr Mayo has considerable versatility of pen; he dashes at everything, from the ultra-grotesque to the hyper-sentimental, from the wildest fable to the most substantial matter-of-fact; and if not particularly successful in some styles, in others he really makes what schoolboys call "a very good offer." But the taste of the day is by no means for extravaganza travels, after the fashion of Gulliver, but without the brilliant and searching satire that lurks in Lilliput and Laputa. Mr Herman Melville might have known that much; although we have heard say that certain keen critics have caught glimpses in his _Mardi_ of a hidden meaning--one, however, which the most penetrating have hitherto been unable to unravel. We advise Dr Mayo to start afresh, with a better scheme. Instead of torturing his inventive faculties to produce rotatory dragons, wingless birds, (propelled through the air by valves in their heads,) and countries where courtiers, like Auriol in the ring at Franconi's, do public homage by standing on their hands; let him seek his inspiration in real life, as it exists in the wilder regions of the vast continent of which he is a native. A man who has strayed so far, and seen so much, can hardly be at a loss. The slaver's surgeon, the inmate of the Bedouin's tent, the bold explorer of the deadly swamps of Congo, had surely rambled nearer home before a restless fancy lured him to such distant and dangerous latitudes. Or are we too bold in assuming that the wilds and forests of Western America have echoed to the crack of his rifle, and that the West Indian seas have borne the furrow of his vessel's prow? It is in such scenes we would gladly find him, when next he risks himself in print: beneath the shade of the live oak or on the rolling prairie, or where the black flag, with the skeleton emblem, floats from the masthead. He has worked out his crotchet of an imaginary white nation in the heart of Africa, carrying it through with laborious minuteness, and with results hardly equal to the pains bestowed: let him now turn from the ideal to the real, and may our next meeting be on the Spanish main under rover's bunting, or west of the clearings, where the bison roams and the Redskin prowls, and the stragglers from civilisation have but begun to show themselves.

THE GREEN HAND.[7]

A "SHORT" YARN.--PART III.

The evening after that in which the commander of the Gloucester Indiaman introduced his adventures, nearly the same party met on the poop to hear them continued.

"Well then," began Captain Collins, leaning back against a stanchion of the quarter-rail, with folded arms, legs crossed, and his eyes fixed on the weather-leech of the mizen-topsail to collect his thoughts;--"well then, try to fancy the Seringapatam in chase of the Gloucester; and if I _do_ use a few extra sea-terms, I consider the ladies good enough sailors for them already. At any rate, just throw a glance aloft now and then, and our good old lady will explain herself; to her own sex, she's as good as a dictionary without words!"

[7] See No. CCCCI., March 1849.

The second day out we had the wind more from seaward, which broke up the haze into bales of cloud, and away they went rolling in for the Bay of Biscay; with a longer wave and darker water, and the big old Indiaman surged over it as easily as might be, the blue breeze gushing right into her main-tack through the heave of the following seas, and the tail of the trade-wind flying high above her trucks in shreds and patches. Things got more ship-shape on deck; anchor-flukes brought inboard on the head-rail, and cables stowed away--the very best sign you can have of being clear of the land. The first officer, as they called him, was a good-looking fellow, that thought no small-beer of himself, with his glossy blue jacket and Company's buttons, white trowsers, and a gold thread round his cap: he had it stuck askew to show how his hair was brushed, and changed his boots every time he came on deck. Still he looked like a sailor, if but for the East India brown on his face, and there was no mistake about his knowing how to set a sail, trim yards, or put the ship about; so that the stiff old skipper left a great deal to him, besides trusting in him for a first-rate navigator that had learned headwork at a naval school. The crew were to be seen all mustering before tea-time in the dog-watch, with their feet just seen under the foot mat of the fore-course, like actors behind a playhouse curtain: men that I warrant you had seen every country under heaven amongst them, as private as possible, and ready to enjoy their pots of tea upon the forecastle, as well as their talk.

The old judge evidently fought shy of company, and perhaps meant to have his own mess-table under the poop as long as the voyage lasted: scarcely any of the ladies had apparently got their sea-qualms over yet, and, for all I knew, _she_ might not be on board at all; or, if she were, her father seemed quite Turk enough to keep her boxed up with jalousie-blinds, Calcutta fashion, and give her a walk in the middle watch, with the poop tabooed till morning! The jolly, red-faced indigo-planter was the only one that tried to get up anything like spirit at the table; indeed, he would have scraped acquaintance with me if I had been in a mood for it: all I did was to say 'Yes' and 'No,' and to take wine with him. "Poor fellow!" said he, turning to three or four of the cadets, that stuck by him like pilot-fish to an old shark, "he's thinking of his mother at home, I daresay." The fools thought this was meant as a joke, and began to laugh. "Why, you unfledged griffins you," said the planter, "what d'ye see to nicker at, like so many jackals in a trap? D'ye suppose one thinks the less of a man for having a heart to be sick in, as well as a stomach--eh?" "Oh, don't speak of it, Mr Rollock!" said one. "Come, come, old boy!" said another, with a white mustache on his lip, "'twon't do for you to go the sentimental, you know!" "Capsize my main-spanker, 'tis too funny, though!" put in a fellow who wore a glazed hat on deck, and put down all the ropes with numbers on paper, as soon as he had done being sick. The planter leant back in his chair, looked at them coolly, and burst out a-laughing. "Catch me ever 'going home' again!" said he. "Of all the absurd occasions for impudence with the egg-shell on its head coming out, hang me if these fifteen thousand miles of infernal sea-water ain't the worst! India for ever!--that's the place to _try_ a man! He's either sobered or gets room to work there; and just wait, my fine fellows, till I see _you_ on the Custom-house _Bunda_ at Bombay, or setting off up country--you're all of you the very food for _sircars_ and _coolies_! That quiet lad there, now, soft as he looks,--I can tell by his eye he won't be long a griff--He'll do something! I tell you what, as soon as he's tasted a mango-fish, he'll _understand_ the country! Why, sir!" said he again, smacking his lips, "'tis worth the voyage of itself--you begin a new existence, so to speak! I'll be bound all this lot o' water don't contain one single mango-fish! Remember, boys, I promised you all a regular blow-out of mango-fish, and _florican_ with bread sauce, whenever you can get across to Chuckbully Factory!" "Blow good breeze, then; blow away the main jib!" said the nautical young gentleman; "I'll join you, old fellow!" "Not the best way to bring it about, though!" said the indigo-planter, good-naturedly, not knowing but there _was_ such a sail on the ship.

The yellow setting sun was striking over the starboard quarter-boat, and the Bay of Biscay lay broad down to leeward for a view--a couple of large craft, with all studding-sails set before the wind, making for land, far enough off to bring their canvass in a piece, and begin to look blue with the air--one like a milkwoman with pitchers and a hoop; the other like a girl carrying a big bucketful of water, and leaning the opposite way to steady herself. There was one far to north-east, too, no more than a white speck in the gray sky; and the land-cloud went up over it into so many sea-lions' heads, all looking out of their manes. The children clapped their hands and laughed; and the ladies talked about the vessels, and thought they saw land--Spain or the Pyrenees, perhaps. However, it wasn't long before my American friend Snout caught sight of me in the midst of his meditations, as he turned bolt round on his toes to hurry aft again. "The fact is, mister," said he, "_I'm_ riled a little at _the_ 'tarnation pride of you Britishers. There now," said he, pointing at the blaze of the sun to westward, with his chin, "there's _a_ consolation! I calculate the sun's just over Noo-York, which I expect to give you old country folks considerable pain!"

"No doubt!" said I, with a sigh, "one can't help thinking of a banker run off with ever so much English gold!" "You're a sensible chap, you are. It's _a_ right-down asylum _for_ oppressed Eur_o_pains, that can't be denied." "And Africans too," I put in. "Indy, now," said he, "I reckon there's a sight of dollars made in that country--you don't s'pose I'm goin' out there for nothing? We'll just take it out o' your hands yet, mister. I don't ought to let you into the scheme till I know you better, you see; but I expect to want a sort o' company got up before we land. There's one of your nabobs, now, came into the ship at Possmouth with a whole tail of niggers-dressed-up ----." "And a lady with him, I think?" said I, as coolly as I could.--"I'll somehow open on that chap about British tyranny, I guess, after gettin' a little knowledge out of him. We'd just _rise_ the niggurs, if they had _not_ such a right-down cur'ous _my_-thullogy--but I tell you now, mister, that's one of the very p'ints I expect to meet. Miss'naries won't do it so slick off in two thousand years, I kinder think, as this indentical specoolation will in _ten_,--besides payin' like Peruvain mines, which the miss'nary line don't. I'm a regoolar Down-easter, ye see--kinder piercin' into a subject, like our nation in gin'ral--and the whull schim hangs together a little, I calculate, mister?" "So I should think, Mr Snout, indeed," I said. Here the American gave another chuckle, and turned to again on his walk, double quick, till you'd have thought the whole length of the poop shook: when who should I see with the tail of my eye, but my friend the _Kitmagar_ salaaming to Mr Snout, by the break of the quarterdeck. The Yankee seemed rather taken aback at first, and didn't know what to make of him. "S'laam, sah'b," said the dark servant, with an impudent look, and loud enough for me to hear, as I stepped from aft,--"Judge sahib i-send genteeman salaam--say too much hivvy boot he got--all same as _Illimphant_! S'pose master not so much loud walk, _this_ side?" "_Well!_" broke out the American, looking at the Bengalee's flat turban and mustache, as if he were too great a curiosity to be angry with, then, turning on his heel to proceed with his walk, "Now, mister," said he to me, "that's what I call an incalculable imp_u_dent black--but he's the first I ever saw with hair on his lip, it's a fact!" "Master not _mind_?" said the Kitmagar, raising his key next time Mr Snout wheeled round. "Judge sahib burra burra buhadoorkea!--ver' great man!" "D---- niggur!" said Mr Snout, tramping away aft; "there's your British regoolations, I say, young man! niggurs bààing on the quarterdeck, and free-born citizens put off it!" "_Bhote khoob_, mistree!" squeaked out the native again; "burra judge sahib not i-sleep apter he dine?--ver_i_ well--I tell the sahib, passiger mistree moor stamp-i-stamp all the moor I can say!" So off he went to report in the poop-cabin. A little after, up shot a head wrapped in a yellow bandanna, just on the level of the poop-deck, looking through the breast-rail; and the next thing I saw was the great East Indian himself, with a broad-flapped Manilla hat over this top-gear, and a red-flowered dressing-gown, standing beside the binnacle with Captain Williamson. "What the deuce, Captain Williamson!" said the judge, with an angry glance up to the poop, "cannot I close my eyelids after dinner for one instant--in my own private apartments, sir--for this hideous noise! Who the deuce _is_ that person there--eh, eh?" "He's an American gentleman, I believe, Sir Charles," replied the captain. "_Believe_, sir!" said the judge, "you ought to _know_ every individual, I think, Captain Williamson, whom you admitted into this vessel! I expressly stipulated for quiet, sir--I understood that no suspicious or exceptionable persons should travel in the same conveyance with _my_ suwarry. I'd have taken the whole ship, sir!" "I've no more to do than tell him the regulations aboard, Sir Charles," said the captain, "and the annoyance will cease." "_Tell_ him, indeed!" said the judge, a little more good-humouredly, "why, captain, the man looks like a sea-pirate! You should have taken only such raw griffins as that young lad on the other side. Ho, kitmagar!" "Maharaj?" said the footman, bowing down to the deck. "_Slippers lao!_" "Jee, khodabund," answered the native, and immediately after he reappeared from the round-house door, with a pair of turned-up yellow slippers. "Take them up with my salaam to that gentleman there," said Sir Charles, in Hindostance, "and ask him to use them." "Hullo!," sung out Mr Snout, on being hove-to by the kitmagar, with one hand on his breast and the other holding the slippers, "this won't do! You'd better not _rile_ me again, you cussed niggur you--out o' my way!" There they went at it along the poop together, Mr Snout striding right forward with his long legs, and the kitmagar hopping backward out of his way, as he tried to make himself understood; till, all at once, the poor fellow lost his balance at the ladder-head, and over he went with a smash fit to have broken his neck, if the captain's broad back hadn't fortunately been there to receive it. The rage of Sir Charles at this was quite beyond joking; nothing else would satisfy him but the unlucky Yankee's being shoved off the poop by main force, and taken below--the one stamping and roaring like an old buffalo, and the other testifying against all "aristocratycal _ty_ranny."

At eight bells, again, I found it a fine breezy night, the two upper mates walking the weather quarterdeck in blue-water style, six steps and a look to windward, then a wheel round, and, now and then, a glance into the binnacle. I went aft and leant over the Seringapatam's lee quarter, looking at the white backwash running aft from her bows, in green sparks, into the smooth alongside, and the surge coming round her counter to meet it. Everything was set aloft that could draw, even to a starboard main-topmast-stunsail; the high Indiaman being lighter than if homeward-bound, and the breeze strong abeam, she had a good heel-over to port: but she went easily through the water, and it was only at the other side you heard it rattling both ways along the bends. The shadow of her went far to leeward, except where a gleam came on the top of a wave or two between the sails and under their foot. Just below the sheer of the hull aft it was as dark as night, though now and then the light from a port struck on it and went in again; but every time she sank, the bight of her wake from astern swelled up away round the counter, with its black side as smooth as a looking-glass. I kept peering into it, and expecting to see my own face, while all the time I was very naturally thinking of one quite different, and felt uneasy till I should actually see her. "Confound it!" I thought, "were it only a house, one might walk round and round it till he found out the window!" I fancied her bewitching face through the garden door, as clearly as if I saw it in the dark head of the swell; but I'd have given more only to hear that imp of a cockatoo scream once--whereas there was nothing but the water working up into the rudder-case; the pintles creaking, and the tiller-ropes cheeping as they traversed; and the long welter of the sea when the ship eased down, with the surgeon and his friends walking about and laughing up to windward. From that, again, I ran on putting things together, till, in fact, Jacobs's notion of a shipwreck seemed by far the best. No doubt Jacobs and Westwood, with a few others, would be saved, while I didn't even object much to the old nabob himself, for respectability's sake, and to spare crape. But, by Jove, wouldn't one bring him to his bearings soon enough there! Every sailor gets hold of this notion some night-watch or other, leaning over the side, with pretty creatures aboard he can scarce speak to otherwise; and I was coiling it down so fast myself, at the moment, that I had just begun to pitch into the nabob about our all being Adam's sons and daughters, under a knot of green palm-trees, at the door of a wooden house, half thatched with leaves, when I was brought up with a round turn by seeing a light shining through the hazy bull's-eye in the deck where I stood. No doubt the sweet girl I had been thinking of was actually there, and going to bed! I stretched over the quarter, but the heavy mouldings were in the way of seeing more than the green bars of the after window--all turned edgeways to the water, where the gallery hung out like a corner turret from the ship's side. Now and then, however, when she careened a little more than ordinary, and the smooth lee swell went heaping up opposite, I could notice the light through the venetians from the state-room come out upon the dark water in broad bright lines, like the grate across a fire, then disappearing in a ripple, till it was gone again, or somebody's shadow moved inside. It was the only lighted window in the gallery, and I looked every time it came as if I could see in; when at last, you may fancy my satisfaction, as, all of a sudden, one long slow heave-over of the ship showed me the whole bright opening of the port, squared out of her shadow, where it shone upon the glassy round of the swell. 'Twas as plain as from a mirror in a closet,--the lighted gallery window with its frame swung in, a bit of the deck-roof I was standing on, and two female figures at the window--mere dark shapes against the lamp. I almost started back at the notion of their seeing me, but away lengthened the light on the breast of the swell, and it sank slowly down into a black hollow, as the Indiaman eased up to windward. Minute by minute, quite breathless, did I watch for such another chance; but next time she leant over as much, the port had been closed, and all was dark; although those few moments were enough to send the heart into my mouth with sheer delight. The figure I had seen holding with one hand by the portsill, and apparently keeping up her dress with the other, as if she were looking down steadily on the heave of the sea below--it couldn't be mistaken. The line of her head, neck, and shoulders, came out more certain than if they hadn't been filled up with nothing but a black shadow; it was just Lota Hyde's, as she sat in the ball-room amongst the crowd, I'd have bet the Victory to a bumboat on it: only her hair hung loose on one side, while the girl behind seemed to be dressing the other, for it was turned back, so that I saw clear past her cheek and neck to where the lamp was, and her ear gleamed to the light. For one moment nothing could be plainer, than the glimpse old Davy Jones gave me by one of his tricks; but the old fellow was quite as decorous in his way as a chamberblind, and swallowed his pretty little bit of blab as quickly as if it had been a mermaid caught at her morning toilet. Whenever I found there was to be no more of it for the night, the best thing to calm one's feelings was to light a cigar and walk out the watch; but I took care it should rather be over the nabob's head than his daughter's, and went up to the weather side, where there was nobody else by this time, wishing her the sweetest of dreams, and not doubting I should see her next day.

I daresay I should have walked out the first watch, and the second too, if Westwood hadn't come up beside me before he turned in.

"Why, you look like the officer of the watch, Ned!" said my friend, after taking a glance, round at the night. "Yes--what?--a--a--I don't think so," stammered I, not knowing what he said, or at least the meaning of it, though certainly it was not so deep. "I hope not though, Tom!" said I again, "'tis the very thing I don't want to look like!" "You seem bent on keeping it up, and coming the innocent, at any rate," said he; "I really didn't know you the first time I saw you in the cuddy." "Why, man, you never saw our theatricals in the dear old Iris, on the African station! I was our best female actor of tragedy there, and _did_ Desdemona so well that the black cook who stood for Othello, actually cried. He said, 'Nobody but 'ee dibble umself go forsmudder missee Dasdemoner!'" "I daresay," said Westwood; "but what is the need for it _now_, even if _you_ could serve as a blind for me?" "My dear fellow!" said I, "not at all--you've kept it up very well so far--just go on." "Keep it up, Ned?" inquired he, "what do you mean? I've done nothing except keep quiet, from mere want of spirits." "So much the better," I said; "I never saw a man look more like a prophet in the wilderness; it doesn't cost you the least trouble--why you'd have done for Hamlet in the Iris, if for nothing else! After all, though, a missionary don't wear blue pilot-cloth trousers, nor tie his neckerchief as you do, Tom. You must bend a white neckcloth to-morrow morning! I'm quite serious, Westwood, I assure you," continued I. "Just think of the suspicious look of two navy men being aboard an _Indiaman_, nobody knows how! Why, the first frigate we speak, or port we touch at, they'd hand one or both of us over at once--which I, for my part, shouldn't at all like!" "Indeed, Collins," said Tom, turning round, "I really cannot understand _why_ you went out in her! It distresses me to think that here you've got yourself into this scrape on my account! At least you'll put back in the first home-bound ship we----"

"Oh!" exclaimed I, blushing a little in the dark though, both at Westwood's simplicity and my not wishing to tell him my secret yet--"I'm tired of shore--I _want_ to see India again--I'm thinking of going into the _army_, curse it!" "The _army_, indeed!" said Westwood, laughing for the first time, "and you midshipman all over. No--no--that won't do! I see your drift, you can't deceive _me_! You're a true friend, Ned,--to stand by an old schoolmate so!" "No, Tom!" said I; "'tis yourself has too kind a heart, and more of a sailor's, all fair and above-board, than I can manage! I _won't_ humbug _you_, at any rate--I tell you I've got a scheme of my own, and you'll know more of it soon." Tom whistled; however I went on to tell him, "The long and the short of it is, Westwood, you'll bring both of us by the head if you don't keep up the missionary." "Missionary!" repeated he; "you don't mean to say you and Neville intended all that long toggery you supplied my kit with, for me to sail under _missionary_ colours? I tell you what, Ned, it's not a character I like to cut jokes upon, much less to sham!" "Jokes!" said I; "there's no joking about it; 'tis serious enough." "Why," said Westwood, "_now_ I know the reason of a person like a clergyman sighting me through his spectacles for half an hour together, these two evenings below! This very afternoon he called me his brother, and began asking me all manner of questions which I could no more answer than the cook's mate." "Clergyman be hanged!" said I, "you must steer clear of him, Tom--take care you don't bowse up your jib too much within hail of him! Mind, I gave your name, both to the head-steward and the skipper, as the Reverend Mr Thomas, going back to Bombay." "The devil you did!" "Why there was nothing else for it, Westwood," I said, "when you were beyond thinking for yourself. All you've got to do with that solemn chap in the spectacles, is just to look as wise as possible, and let him know you belong to the _Church_. And as for shamming, you needn't sham a bit--_taketoit_ my dear fellow, if that will do you good!" I said this in joke, but Westwood seemed to ponder on it for a minute or two. "Indeed, Collins," said he gravely, "I _do_ think you're right. What do we sailors do, but give up everything in life for a mere schoolboy notion, and keep turning up salt water for years together like the old monks did the ground; only they grew corn and apples for their pains, and we have nothing but ever so many dull watches and wild cruises ashore to remember! How many sailors have turned preachers and missionaries, just because something, by accident as it were, taught them to put to account what you can't help feeling now and then in the very _look_ of the sea? What does it mean in the Scriptures, Ned, about 'seeing the wonders of the Lord in the deep?'" As Westwood said this, both of us stopped on the taffrail, and, somehow or other, a touch of I didn't well know _what_ went through me. I held my breath, with his hand on my arm, just at the sight I had seen a thousand times--the white wake running broad away astern, with a mark in the middle as if it had been torn, on to the green yeast of the waves, then right to their black crests plunging in the dark. It was midnight ahead, and the clouds risen aloft over where I had been looking half all hour before; but the long ragged split to westward was opened up, and a clear glaring glance of the sky, as pale as death, shot through it on the horizon. "I can't be sorry for having gone to sea," said Westwood again; "but isn't it a better thing to leave home and friends, as those men do, for the sake of carrying the gospel to the heathen?" As soon as we wheeled round, with the ship before us, leaning over and mounting to the heave, and her spread of canvass looming out on the dark, my thoughts righted. "Well," said I, "it may be all very well for some--every one to his rope; but, for my part, I think if a man hadn't been made for the sea, he couldn't have built a ship, and where would your missionaries be _then_? You're older than I am, Westwood, or I'd say you let some of your notions run away with you, like a Yankee ship with her short-handed crew!" "Oh, Ned," said he, "of all places in the world for one's actions coming back on him the sea is the worst, especially when you're an idler, and have nothing to do but count the sails, or listen to the passengers' feet on deck. These two days, now, I've thought more than I ever did in my life. I can't get that man's death out of my head; every time, the sea flashes round me as I come from below, I think of him--it seems to me he is lying yet by the side of the Channel. I can't help having the notion he perhaps _fired in the air_!" "'Twas a base lie!" said I; "If _he_ weren't _there_, you wouldn't be here, I call tell you, Westwood." "I don't know how I shall ever drag through this voyage," continued he. "If there were a French gunboat to cut out to-morrow morning, or if we were only to have a calm some day in sight of a Spanish slaver,--'tis nothing but a jogging old Indiaman though! I shall never more see the flag over my head with pride--every prospect I had was in the service!"

Next morning was fine, and promised to be hot; the ship still with a sidewind from near south-west, which 'twas easy to see had slackened since midnight with a pour of rain, the sails being all wet, and coats hung to dry in the fore-rigging; she was going little more than five or six knots headway. The water was bluer, lifting in long waves, scarce a speck of foam except about the ship; but instead of having broke up with the sun, or sunk below the level, the long white clouds were risen high to leeward, wandering away at the top and facing us steady below out of the sky, a pretty sure sign they had more to do. However, the Indiaman was all alive from stem to stern: decks drying as clean as a table; hens and ducks clucking in the coops at their food; pigs grunting; stewards and cabin-boys going fore and aft, below and above, and the men from aloft coming slowly down for breakfast, with an eye into the galley funnel. Most of the passengers were upon deck, in knots all along the poop-nettings, to look out for Corvo and Flores, the westernmost of the Azores, which we had passed before daybreak.

"I say, Fawd!" said the warlike cadet with the mustache, all of a sudden yawning and stretching himself, as if he'd been struck with the thing himself, "Cussed dull this vessel already, ain't it?" "Blast me, no, you fellow!" said Ford, the nautical man--"that's because you're not interested in the ocean--the sea--as I am! You should study the _craft_, Bob, my boy! I'll teach you to go aloft. I only wish it would blow harder--not a mere capful of wind, you know, but a tempest!" "By Jove! Fawd," said the other, "_how_ we _shall_ enjoy India--even that breakfast with old Rollock! By the bye, ain't breakfast ready yet?" These two fellows, for my part, I took for a joint-model, just trying to hit a mid-helm betwixt them, else I couldn't have got through it: accordingly they both patronised me. "Haw, Cawlins!" said one, nodding to me. "Is that you, my boy?" said the other; "now you're a fellow _never_ would make a sailor!" "I daresay not," I said, gravely, "if they have all to commence as horse-marines." "Now, such ignorance!" said Ford; "marines don't ride horses, Collins, you fellow!--how d'you think they could be _fed_ at sea--eh?" "Well--now--that didn't occur to me!" said I, in the cadet key. "Fawd, my boy, you--demmee--you know too much--you're quite a sea-cook!" "Oh, now! But I'm afraid, Winterton, I never shall land ashore in India--I _am_ tempted to go into the navy instead." "I say, Mr Ford," put in a fat unlicked cub of a tea-middy, grinning as he listened, "I've put you up to a few _rises_ aboard, but I don't think I told you we've got a dozen or so of _donkeys_[8] below in the steerage?" "Donkeys!--no?" said the griffin. "Yes," replied the midshipman; "they kick like blazes, though, if they get loose in a gale--why mine, now, would knock a hole through the side in no time--I'll show you them for a glass of grog, Mr Ford." "Done!" and away they went. "That fool, Fawd, you know, Cawlins, makes one sick with his stuff; I declare he chews little bits of tobacco in our room till he vomits as much as before," said Winterton. "I tell you what, Cawlins, you're a sensible man--I'll let you into a secret! What do you think--there's the deucedest pretty girl in the vessel, we've none of us seen except myself; I caught a sight of her this very mawning. She don't visit the cuddy at all; papa's proud, you pusseeve--a nabob in short!" "Oh, dear!" said I. "Yes, I do assure you, quite a bew-ty! What's to be done?--we absolutely must meet her--eh, Cawlins?" Here I mused a bit. "Oh!" said I, looking up again, "shall we send a deputation, do you think?" "Or get up a ball, Cawlins?--Hallo, what's this?" said he, leaning over the breast-rail to look at a stout lady who was lugging a chubby little boy of three or four, half-dressed, up the poop-stair, while her careful husband and a couple of daughters blocked it up above. "See, Tommy, dear!" said she, "look at the _land_--the nice, land, you know, Tommy." "Come away, my love," said her spouse, "else you won't see it." Tommy, however, hung back manfully. "Tommy don't want wook at _yand_," sang out he, kicking the deck; "it all such 'mell of a sheep, ma; me wook at 'at man wis _gate feel_. Fare other _feel_, man? Oh, fat a ugwy man!" The honest tar at the wheel pulled up his shirt, and looked terribly cut at this plain remark on his phiz, which certainly wasn't the most beautiful; meanwhile he had the leech of the main to'gallant sail shaking. "Mind your helm, there," sung out the second mate from the capstan. "My good man," said the lady, "will you be so kind as to show us the land?" "Ay, ay, sir," growled he, putting up his weather spokes; "sorry I carn't, ma'am--please not to speak to the man at the wheel." Jacobs was coiling down the ropes on a carronade close by, and stepped forward: "Beg your ladyship's pardon," said he, "but if ye'll give me charge o' the youngster till you goes on the poop--why, I've got a babby at home myself." The stout lady handed him over, and Jacobs managed the little chap wonderfully. This was the first time Tommy had been on deck since leaving home, and he couldn't see over the high bulwarks, so he fancied it was a house he was in. "Oh, suts big _tees, man_!" shouted he, clapping his hands as soon as he noticed the sails and rigging aloft; "suts warge birds in a _tees_!" "Ay, ay, my little man," answered Jacobs, "that's the wonderfowl _tree_! Did ye ever hear Jack and the Bean-stalk, Tommy?" "Oh, 'ess, to be soo, _man_!" said Tommy, scornfully, as if he should think he had. "Well, little un," said Jacobs, "that's it, ye see. It grows up every night afore Jack's door--and them's Jack an' his brothers a-comin' down out on the wonderfowl country aloft, with fruits in their hands." The little fellow was delighted, and for going aloft at once. "Ye must wait a bit, Tommy, my lad, till you're bigger," said Jacobs; "here I'll show you the country, though;" so he lifted the boy up to let him see the bright blue sea lying high away round the sky. In place of crying, as he would have done otherwise, Tommy stared with pleasure, and finished by vowing to get as soon big as possible, Jacobs advising him to eat always as hard as he had been doing hitherto.

[8] Sea slang for sailors' chests.

This morning the breakfast party was in high spirits: Mr Finch, the chief officer, rigged up to the nines in white trowsers and Company's jacket, laying himself out to please the young ladies, with whom he began to be a regular hero. He was as blustering as a young lion, and as salt-tongued as a Channel pilot to the men; but with the ladies, on the poop or in the cabin, he was always twisting his sea-talk into fine language, like what you see in books, as if the real thing weren't good enough. He rubbed his hands at hearing the mate on deck singing out over the skylight to trim yards, and gave a look along to the captain. "You must understand, ladies," said the mate, "this is what we mariners call the 'ladies' wind!'" "Oh delightful!" "Oh _so_ nice!" "You sailors _are_ so polite!" exclaimed the young ladies--"then does it actually _belong_ to us?" "Why it's a _Trade_ wind, Miss Fortescue!" said Ford the nautical cadet, venturing to put in a word; but the ladies paid no attention to him, and the chief mate gave him a look of contempt. "You see, ladies, the reason is," said the mate, in a flourishing way, "because it's so regular, and as gentle as--as--why it wafts your bark into the region of, you see,--the--" "The 'Doldrums,'" put in the third mate, who was a brinier individual by far, and a true seaman, but wished to pay his compliments too, between his mouthfuls. "At any rate," Finch went on, "it's congenial, I may say, to the feelings of the fair--you need never touch her braces from one day to another. I just wish, Miss Fortescue, you'd allow me the felicity of letting you see how to put the ship about!" "A _soldier_ might put her in stays, miss," said the third mate again, encouragingly, "and out of 'em again; she's a remarkable easy craft, owing to her----" "Confound it! Mr Rickett," said the first mate, turning round to his unlucky inferior, "you're a sight too coarse for talking to ladies. Well the captain didn't hear you!" Rickett looked dumbfoundered, not knowing what was wrong; the old ladies frowned; the young ones either blushed or put their handkerchiefs to their mouths, and some took the occasion for walking off.

The weather began to have a different turn already by the time we got up--the clouds banking to leeward, the sea dusky under them, and the air-line between rather bluish. Two or three lazy gulls in our wake began to look alive, and show themselves, and a whole black shoal of porpoises went tumbling and rolling across the bows for half an hour, till down they dived of a sudden, head-foremost, one after another in the same spot, like so many sheep through a gap.

My gentleman-mate was to be seen everywhere about the decks, and active enough, I must say: the next minute he was amongst two or three young ladies aft, as polite as a dancing-master, showing them everything in board and out, as if nobody knew it except himself. Here a young girl, one of Master Tommy's sisters, came skipping aft, half in a fright. "Oh, Miss Fortescue!" cried she, "just think!--I peeped over into a nasty black hole there, with a ladder in it, and saw ever so many common sailors hung up in bags from the ceiling. Oh, what do you think, one of them actually kissed his hand to me!" "Only one of the watch below awake, Miss," said the mate; "impertinent swab!--I only wish I knew which it was." "Poor fellows!" said the young ladies; "pray, don't be harsh to them--but what have they been doing?" "Oh, nothing," said he, with a laugh, "but swing in their hammocks since eight bells." "Then are they so lazy as to dislike getting up to such delightful-looking occupations?" "Why, ma'am," said the mate, staring a little, "they've been on deck last night two watches, of four hours each, I must say that for them." "Dear me!" broke out the ladies; and on this the chief officer took occasion to launch out again concerning "the weary vigils," as he called them, "which we mariners have to keep, far distant from land, without a smile from the eyes of the fair to bless us! But, however, the very thought of it gives courage to the sailor's manly heart, to disregard the billows' fearful rage, and reef topsails in the tempest's angry height!" Thought I, "he'd much better do it before." However, the young ladies didn't seem to see that, evidently looking upon the mate as the very pink of seamen; and he actually set a second lower stud-sail, to show them how fast she could walk.

"D'ye know, sir," put in the third mate, coming from forward, "I'm in doubt it's going to be rather a sneezer, sir, if ye look round the larboard stuns'ls." Sure enough, if our fine gentleman had had time, amidst his politeness, just to cast an eye beyond his spread of cloth, he would have noticed the clouds gathered all in a lump to north-eastward, one shooting into another--the breast of them lowering down to the horizon, and getting the same colour as the waves, till it bulked out bodily in the middle. You'd have fancied the belly of it scarce half a mile off from the white yard-arms, and the hollow of it twenty--coming as stealthily as a ghost, that walks without feet after you, its face to yours, and the skirt of its winding-sheet in "kingdom come" all the while. I went up on the poop, and away behind the spanker I could see the sun gleam for one minute right on the eye of stray cloud risen to nor'-west, with two short streaks of red, purple, and yellow together--what is called a "wind-gall;" then it was gone. The American was talking away with jovial old Rollock and Ford, who began to look wise, and think there was mischief brewing in the weather. "Mind your helm there, sirrah!" sung out the mate, walking aft to the wheel, as everything aloft fluttered. "She won't lie her course, sir!" said the man. "All aback for'ud!" hailed the men at work on the bowsprit; and hard at it went all hands, trimming yards over and over again; the wind freshening fast, stunsails flapping, booms bending, and the whole spread of canvass in a cumber, to teach the mate not to be in such a hurry with his infernal merchantman's side-wings next time. The last stunsail he hauled down caught full aback before the wheel could keep her away quick enough; the sheet of it hitched foul at the boom-end, and crack through went the boom itself, with a smash that made the ladies think it a case of shipwreck commencing. The loose scud was flying fast out from behind the top of the clouds, and spreading away overhead, as if it would catch us on the other side; while the clouds themselves broke up slowly to both hands, and the north-east breeze came sweeping along right into the three topsails, the wind one way and the sea another. As she rounded away steadying before it, you felt the masts shake in her till the topsails blew out full; she gave one sudden bolt up with her stern, like an old jackass striking behind, which capsized three or four passengers in a heap; and next minute she was surging along through the wide heave of the water as gallantly as heart could wish, driving a wave under her bows that swung back under the forechains on both sides, with two boys running up the rigging far aloft on each mast to stow the royals. The next thing I looked at was poor Ford's nautical hat lifting alongside on the top of a wave, as if it were being handed up to him; but no sooner seen, than it was down in the hollow a quarter of a mile off, a couple of white gulls making snatches at it and one another, and hanging over it again with a doubtful sort of a scream. Still the wind was as yet nothing to speak of when once aft; the sea was getting up slowly, and the Indiaman's easy roll over it made every one cheerful, in spite of the shifts they were put to for getting below. When the bell struck for dinner, the sun was pretty clear, away on our starboard bow; the waves to south-westward glittered as they rose; one side of the ship shone bright to the leech of the mainto'gallant-sail, and we left the second mate hauling down the jibs for want of use for them.

The splendid pace she went at was plain, below in the cuddy, to everybody; you felt her shoving the long seas aside with the force of a thousand horses in one, then sweep they came after her, her stern lifted, she rolled round, and made a floating rush ahead. In the middle of it all, something darkened the half-open skylight, where I perceived the Scotch second-mate's twisted nose and red whiskers, as he squinted down with one eye aloft, and disappeared again; after which I heard them clue up to'gallant-sails. Still she was driving through it rather too bodily to let the seas rise under her; you _heard_ the wind hum of the main-topsail, and sing through betwixt it and the main-course, the scud flying over the skysail-mast truck, which I could see from below. The second mate looked in once more, caught the first officer's eye with a glance aloft, and the gallant mate left attending to the ladies to go on deck. Down went the skylight frame, and somebody carefully threw a tarpaulin over it, so that there was only the light from the port-windows, by which a dozen faces turned still whiter.

The moment I shoved my head out of the booby-hatch, I saw it was like to turn out a regular gale from nor'-east. Both courses brailed close-up, and blowing out like rows of big-bladders; the three topsail-yards down on the caps to reef, their canvass swelling and thundering on the stays like so many mad elephants breaking loose; the wild sky ahead of us staring right through in triumph, as it were, and the wind roaring from aft in her bare rigging; while a crowd of men in each top were laying out along the foot-ropes to both yard-arms. Below, they were singing out at the reef-tackles, the idlers tailing on behind from the cook to the cabin-boys, a mate to each gang, and the first officer with his hands to his mouth before the wheel, shouting "Bear a hand!--d'ye hear!--two reefs!" It did one's heart good, and I entered into the spirit of it, almost forgiving Finch his fine puppy lingo, when I saw him take it so coolly, standing like a seaman, and sending his bull's voice right up with the wind into the bellies of the topsails--so I e'en fell-to myself, and dragged with the steward upon the mizen reef-tackle till it was chock up. There we were, running dead before it, the huge waves swelling long and dark after us out of the mist, then the tops of them scattered into spray; the glaring white yards swayed slowly over aloft, each dotted with ten or a dozen sturdy figures, that leant over with the reef-points in their hands, waiting till the men at the _earings_ gave the word; and Jacobs's face, as he looked round to do so--hanging on heaven knows what at one of the ends--was as distinct as possible against the gray scud miles off, and sixty feet above the water. A middy, without his cap, and his hair blowing out, stood holding on in the main-top to quicken them; the first mate waved his hand for the helmsman to "luff a little." The ship's head was rounding slowly up as she rose on a big blue swell, that caught a wild gleam on it from westward, when I happened to glance towards the wheel. I could scarcely trust my eyes--in fact it had never been less in my mind since coming aboard than at that very point--but outside one of the round-house doors, which was half open, a few feet from the bulwark I leant over--of all moments in the day, _there_ stood Lota Hyde herself at last! Speak of faces!--why, I hadn't even power to turn farther round, and if I was half out of breath before, what with the wind and with pulling my share, I was breathless now--all my notions of her never came up to the look of her face at that instant! She just half stopped, as it were, at sight of the state of things, her hands letting go of the large shawl, and her hair streaming from under a straw hat tied down with a ribbon--her lips parted betwixt dread and bewilderment, and her eyes wandering round till they settled a-gazing straight at the scene ahead, in pure delight. I actually looked away aloft from her again, to catch what it was she seemed to see that could be so beautiful!--the second reef just made fast, men crowding in to run down and hoist away with the rest, till, as they tailed along decks, the three shortened topsails rose faster up against the scud, and their hearty roaring chorus was as loud as the gale. "Keep her away, my lad!" said the mate, with another wave of his hand; the topsails swelled fair before it, and the Indiaman gave a plunge right through the next sea, rising easily to it, heave after heave. The setting sun struck two or three misty spokes of his wheel through a cloud, that made a big wave here and there glitter; the ship's white yards caught some of it, and a row of broad backs, with their feet stretching the foot-rope as they stowed the foresail, shone bright out, red, blue, and striped, upon the hollow of the yellow fore-topsail, in the midst of the gale; while just under the bowsprit you saw her black figure-head, with his white turban, and his hand to his breast, giving a cool salaam now and then to the spray from her bows. At that moment, though, Lota Hyde's eye was the brightest thing I could find--all the blue gone out of the waves was in it. As for her seeing myself, I hadn't had space to think of it yet, when all of a sudden I noticed her glance light for the first time, as it were, on the mate, who was standing all the while with his back to her, on the same plank of the quarterdeck. "Down main-course!" he sung out, putting one hand in his jacket-pocket; "down both tacks--that's it, my men--down with it!"--and out it flapped, slapping fiercely as they dragged it by main force into the bulwark-cleats, till it swelled steady above the main-stay, and the old ship sprang forward faster than before, with a wild wash of the Atlantic past her sides. "Another hand to the wheel, here!" said the first officer. He took a look aloft, leaning to the rise of her bows, then to windward as she rolled; everything looked trim and weatherly, so he stepped to the binnacle, where the lamp was ready lighted, and it just struck me what a smart, good-looking fellow the mate was, with his sun-burnt face; and when he went to work, straight-forward, no notion of showing off. "Confound it, though!" thought I of a sudden, seeing _her_ eyes fixed on him again, and then to seaward. "Mr Macleod," said he to the second mate, "send below the watch, if you please. This breeze is first-rate, though!" When he turned round, he noticed Miss Hyde, started, and took off his cap with a fine bow. "I beg pardon, ma'am," said he, "a trifle of wind we have! I hope, Miss Hyde, it hasn't troubled you in the round-house?" What Miss Hyde might have said I don't know, but her shawl caught a gust out of the spanker, though she was in the lee of the high poop; it blew over her head, and then loose--I sprang forward--but the mate had hold of it, and put it over her again. The young lady smiled politely to the mate, and gave a cold glance of surprise, as I thought, at me. I felt, that moment, I could have knocked the mate down and died happy. "Why, sir," said he, with a cool half sneer, "I fancied none of you gentlemen would have favoured us this capful of wind--plenty of air there is on deck, though." It just flashed through my mind what sort of rig I was in--I looked over my infernal 'long-shore toggery, and no wonder she didn't recollect me at all! "_Curse_ this confounded folly!" muttered I, and made a dart to run up the poop-steps, where the breeze took me slap aback, just as the judge himself opened the larboard door. "Why, Violet!" exclaimed he, surprised at seeing his daughter, "are you exposing yourself to this disagreeable--I declare a perfect _storm_!" "But see, papa!" said she, taking hold of his arm, "how changed the sea is!--and the ship!--just look where the sun was!" "Get in--get in, do!" kept on her father; "you can see all that again in some finer place; you should have had a servant with you, at least, Violet." "I shall come out oftener than I thought, papa, I can tell you!" said she, in an arch sort of way, before she disappeared. The mate touched his cap to the judge, who asked where the captain was. "'Gad sir," said the judge crossly, "the floor resembles an earthquake--every piece of furniture swings, sir; 'tis well enough for sleeping, but my family find it impossible to dine. If this _oolta-poolta_ continues in my apartments, I must speak to Captain Williamson about it! He must manage to get into some other part of the sea, where it is less rough," saying which he swayed himself in and shut the door. I still kept thinking and picturing _her_ face--Lota Hyde's--when she noticed the mate. After all, any one that knew tack from bowline might reef topsails in a fair wind; but a girl like _that_ would make more count of a man knowing how to manage wind and sea, than of the Duke on his horse at Waterloo beating Bonaparte; and as for talk, he would jaw away the whole voyage, no doubt, about moonlight and the ocean, and your genteel fancy mariners! "By George, though!" thought I, "if the mate's a better man than me, hang me--it's all right; but burn my wig if I don't go and turn a Hindoo fakeer, with my one arm stuck up in the air till I die! Go it, old lady!" said I, as I glanced over the side before going below for the night, "roll away, only shake something or other to _do_ out of the pace you're going at!"

The next morning, when Westwood and I went on deck, there was still a long sea running after us. However, by noon the sun came sifting through aloft, the breeze got warm, the decks were dry as a bone, and one just saw the large dark-blue swells lift up alongside with a shower of spray, between the seams of the bulwarks. By six o'clock, again, it was got pretty dusk ahead, and I strolled forward right to the heel of the bowsprit, with Westwood, looking down through her head-boards into the heap of white foam that washed up among the woodwork every time she plunged. One knot of the men were sitting with their legs over the break of the top-gallant forecastle, swinging as she rolled--laughing, roaring, and singing as loud as they could bawl, since the wind carried it all forward out of the officers' hearing. I was rather surprised to see and hear that Jacobs's friends, Bill Dykes and Tom, were there: the rogues were taking back their savage to the Andaman Isles again, I suppose. "Well, my lads," said Tom, a regular sample of the man-o'-war's-man: "this is what I calls balling it off! That mate knows how to make her go, any how!" "We'll soon be into tropical regents, I consider!" remarked Bill, who made a point of never using sea-phrases except ashore, when he came out double salt, to make up for his gentility afloat. "Hum," grumbled a big ugly fellow, the same so flattered at the wheel by little Tommy, "I doesn't like your fair winds! I'll tell you what, mates, we'll be havin' it puff more from east'ard ere third watch." "What's the odds, Harry, old ship?" said Tom, "a fair wind still!" "I say, my lads," exclaimed Tom again, looking along toward the poop, "yonder's the ould naboob squinting out of the round-house doors!--what's he after now, I wonder?" On stooping down, accordingly, I could see the judge's face with the binnacle-light shining on it, as he swayed to and fro in the doorway, seemingly in a passion at something or other. "Why," said Bill, "I consider he can't altogether circumstand the shindy as this here roll kicks up inside of his blessed paliss!" "Nabob, does ye call him!" said Harry, sulkily; "I'll tell you what, 'mates, he ben't nothin' but a reg'lar bloody ould tyrant! T'other mornin' there, I just chances to brush against him as I kiles up a rope, says he '_Fellow!_' an' says he to the skipper, 'I'd take it kind,' says he, 'if ye'd horder them commin sailors for to pay more contention alongside o' _my_ legs, Captin Willumsen!' Why, do the old beggar not think as a feller ben't a _man_ as well as hisself, with his _commin sailors_, an' be blowed to him!" "Well though, Harry, old ship," said Tom, "an't that daurter of his'n a jewel! I say, 'mates, she's all rounded into the head, and a clear run from aft, like a corvette model! My eye, that hair of hers is worth gold; I'd go down on the deck to please her, d'ye see!" "No doubt," says Bill, "she's what I call a exact sparkler!" "Well, I doesn't know," said Harry. "Last vy'ge but one we'd got one aboard, a'most beautifuller--half as high again, an' twice her beam--I'm not sure but _she_--" "All my eye, messmates!" broke in Tom; "that one were built for _stowing_, ye see, bo', like yer cargo lumpers. Now, this here young gal minds me o' no other blessed thing but the Nymph corvette's figure-head--and that warn't her match, neither! She don't look down upon a sailor, I can tell ye; there I see her t'other morning-watch a talkin' to Jacobs yonder, as pleasant and cheery as----Hullo, there's the captain comed out o' the naboob's cabin, and speaking with the mate by the compass,--blessed if they an't agoin' to alter her course!"

"Send aft here to the braces!" sung out the first officer to the boatswain. "Blow me, shipmates, that's yeer naboob now, I'll bet a week's grog," growled Harry; "ship's course as fair as a handspike through a grummet; couldn't bring the wind more aft; b--t my eyes, the sea's comin' to be bought and sold!" Whatever it might be _for_, in came the starboard yard-arms till she lay over a little; down studding and top-gallant sails, as neither of them could stand it except from aft; and off went the old ship rising high athwart the seas, her head sou'-south-east, and one streak of broken yellow light, low down to westward on her lee quarter. It was beginning to blow harder, too, and by eight bells it was "Reef topsails, single reef!" The waves played slap on her weather side, the heavy sprays came showering over her bulwarks forward, and the forecastle planks were far from being so comfortable for a snooze as the night before. As soon as the wheel was relieved, and the other watch below, the "ugly man" and his companions returned. "Mates," said he, solemnly, planting his back against the bitts, "I've sailed this five-and-twenty year before the mast, an' I never yet seed the likes o' _that_! Take my say for it, we're _on_ a wind now, but afore next mornin' we'll be close-hauled, beating up against it." "Well," said another, "she leaks a deal in the eyes of her below; in that case, Harry, _your_ watch as slings in the fore-peak'll be all afloat by that time." "What day did this here craft sail on, I asks?" said the sailmaker gravely. "Why, a Thursday night, old ship," replied several eagerly. "No," went on the sailmaker; "you counts sea-fashion, shipmates; but till ye're clear o' the pilot, ye know, its land fashion ye ought for to go by. 'Twas a _Friday_ by that 'ere said reckoning, shipmates." "No! so it was though," said the rest--"it don't _look_ well." "Howsomedever I'm not goin' to come for to go and be a croaker," continued the sailmaker in a voice like a ghost's. "Well, luck or no luck, 'mates," grumbled big Harry, "if so be them larboard bowlines is hauled taut by the morning watch, blow me if I don't be upsides with that 'ere bloody ould naboob--that's all."

Next morning, after all, it was easy to feel the ship had really been hauled close on a wind. When we went up, the weather was clearing, though with a strongish gale from eastward, a heavy sea running, on which the Indiaman strained and creaked as she rose, rolling slowly to windward with her three double-reefed topsails strained full, then pitched head into it, as a cloud of foam and spray flew over her weather bow. It was quite early, the decks lately washed down, and the Indian judge walking the weather quarterdeck as grave and comfortable as if it was all right. The captain was with him, and two mates to leeward. "Sail O!" hailed a man on the foreyard. "Where away?" sung out the mate of the watch. "Broad abeam!" The captain went up to the poop, and I stood on the foremost carronade near the main rigging, where I could just see her now and then white against the blue haze between the hollows of the waves, as the Indiaman lifted. "There she is!" said I, thinking it was Westwood that stopped behind me; it was the judge, however, and as soon as I got down he stepped up, holding on with one hand to a backstay. The ship was rising after a pitch, every bulkhead and timber in her creaking, when all of a sudden I felt by my feet what all sailors feel the same way--she was coming up in the wind too fast to mount with the next wave, and a regular _comber_ it was going to be. I looked to the wheel--there was big Harry himself with a grin on his face, and his eye on Sir Charles, as he coolly gave her half a weather-spoke more, and then whirled it back again to meet her. "For heaven's sake, look out, sir!" exclaimed I. "Why so I do," said the judge, rather good-naturedly. "'Zounds! what's--" You felt the whole ship stop creaking for a moment, as she hung with the last wave--"Hold on!" shouted a mid--she gave a dull quiver from stem to stern, and I fairly pulled the judge close into the bulwark, just as smash, like thunder, came a tremendous green sea over us, three in one, washing down into the lee scuppers. The old gentleman staggered up, dripping like a poodle, and unable to see--one heard the water trickling through the skylights, and stepping away down stairs like a fellow with iron heels; while there was the sailor at the wheel grinding down his spokes in right earnest, looking aloft at the shaking fore-topsail, and the Indiaman seemingly doubtful whether to fall off or broach-to. Up she rose again, however, and drove round with her Turk-head in the air, then dip through the spray as gallantly as ever. "Send that lubber from the wheel, Mr Macleod!" said the captain angrily, when he came down, "he nearly broached the ship to just now!" The "ugly man" put on a double-gloomy face, and grumbled something about her "steering wild;" but the knowing squint he gave Jacobs, who relieved him, was enough to show me he was one of the best helmsmen aboard. As for the judge, he hadn't the least notion it was anything more than a natural mischance, owing to exposing himself. He eyed the bulwark as if he couldn't understand how any wave was able to rise over it, while the captain was apologising, and hoping he wouldn't be the worse. "Eh, young gentleman!" said Sir Charles of a sudden, turning round to me, after a glance from the weather side to the lee one, "now I observe the circumstances, the probability is I should have had myself severely injured on the opposite side there, had it not been for your presence of mind, sir--eh?" Here I made a bow, and looked as modest as I could. "I perceive you are wet, young gentleman," said he again; "you'd better change your dress--eh?" "Thank you, sir!" I said; and as he walked off quite drenched to his cabin, with the captain, I heard him remark it was "wonderfully intelligent in a mere griffin."

However, the wind soon got down to a fine top-gallant breeze; less of a sea on, the clouds sunk in a long gray bank to leeward, and the strange sail plain abeam of us--a large ship steering seemingly more off the wind than the Seringapatam, with top-gallant-sails set--you could just see the heads of her courses, and her black lower-yards, when both of us rose together. Our first officer was all alive at the sight; the reefs were out of our topsails already, and he soon had us ploughing along under ordinary canvass, though still hugging the wind. In a short time the stranger appeared to take the challenge, for he slanted his yards, clapped on royals, and hauled down a stunsail, heading our course, till he was one body of white cloth on the horizon. For a while we seemed to gain on her; but after dinner, there was the other ship's hull up on our lee-bow, rising her white streak out of the water steadily, and just lifting at times on the long blue seas: she was fore-reaching on us, as plain as could be. The mate gave a stamp on the deck, and kept her away a little to set a stunsail. "Why," said I to Westwood, "he'll fall to leeward of himself!" "She's too much _by the head_, Collins," said Westwood; "that's it!" "Hasn't he the sense to take the fore-course off her?" said I, "instead of packing more _on_! Why, that craft weathers on us like a schooner--I wish you and I had the Indiaman for an hour or two, Tom!" It wasn't an hour before we could see the very waves splashing up under her black weather-side, and over her high bows, as she slanted right through it and rose to windward again, standing up to cross our course--a fine frigate-built Indiaman, sharper stemmed than her kind in ordinary, and square in her spread; one yardarm just looking over the other as they ranged aloft, and all signs of a weatherly craft. "That's the Duke o' Bedford!" said a sailor at the braces to his companions, "all oak planks, and not a splinter of teak in _her_! No chance!" Out flew the British colours from her mizen-peak, and next the Company's striped ensign at her fore-royal-mast head, as a signal to speak. However, the Seringapatam only answered by showing her colours, and held on. All of a sudden the other Indiaman was seen slowly falling off before the wind, as if in scorn at such rude manners, and sure of passing us if she chose. For a moment the red sunset glanced through betwixt all three of her masts, every rope as fine as wire; then the canvass swung broad against it, blood-red from the sun, and she showed us her quarter-gallery, with a glimpse of her stern-windows glittering,--you even made out the crowd of passengers and soldiers on her poop, and a man or two going up her rigging. The sea beyond her lay as blue as blue could be, what with the crimson streak that came zig-zag on both sides of her shadow, and gleamed along the smooth troughs, taking a crest or two to dance on by the way; and what with the rough of it near at hand, where the tops of the dark waves ran hither and thither in broad white flakes, we surging heavily over them.

In a few minutes more the sun was not only down, but the clouds banked up to westward, of a deep purple; and almost at once you saw nothing of the other ship, except when a stray streak somehow or other caught her rising, or her mast-heads came across a pale line in the clouds. The breeze got pleasanter as the night went on, and the Seringapatam rattled away in fine style, careening to it by herself.

Well, you know, nothing could be better for a good understanding and high spirits amongst us than a fast course, fine weather, and entering the tropics. As for the tropics, if you have only a roomy ship and a good run of wind, as we had, in those latitudes everything outside of you seems almost to have double the stuff in it that air and water have in other places; while _inside_ of one, again, one felt twice the life he had before, and everybody else came out _newer_ a good deal than on the parlour rug at home. As the days got each hotter than the last, and the sea bluer and bluer, we began to think better of the heavy old Seringapatam's pace, teak though she was, and her sole good point right before the wind. Every night she lighted her binnacle sooner, till deuce the bit of twilight there was, and the dark sky came down on us like the extinguisher over a candle. However, the looks of things round and aloft made full amends for it, as long as we held the "Trades;" old Neptune shifting his scenes there so quickly, that nobody missed getting weather and air, more than he could help, were it only a sight of how the Indiaman got on, without trouble to any living soul save the man at the wheel, as one long, big, bright wave shoved her to another, and the slower they rose the more business she seemed to do of herself. By the time they had furbished her up at their leisure, the Seringapatam had a queer Eastern style, too, throughout; with her grass mattings and husky _coir_ chafing-gear, the yellow varnish about her, and her three topsails of country-canvass, cut narrow towards the head--bamboo stunsail booms, and spare bits of bamboo always ready for everything; besides the bilious-like gold-coloured patches here and there in the rest of her sails, and the outlandish figure-head, that made you sometimes think there might be twenty thousand of them under the bows, dancing away with her like Juggernaut's travelling pagoda. The decks were lively enough to look at; the men working quietly by twos and threes about the bulwarks all day long, and pairs of them to be made out at different points aloft, yarning away comfortably together, as the one passed the ball for the other's serving-mallet, with now a glance at the horizon, and now a grin at the passengers below, or a cautious squint at the top of the mate's cap. White awnings triced over poop and quarterdeck, the cover of the waist hammock-netting clean scrubbed, and the big shady main-course half brailed-up, rustling and bulging above the boats and booms amidships; every hatchway and door with a round funnel of a wind-sail swelling into it, and their bellies moving like so many boa-constrictors come down from aloft, and going in to catch cadets. You saw the bright white sky dazzling along under the awning-cheeks, that glared on it like snow; and the open quarterdeck ports let in so many squares of shifting blue light, with a draught of air into the hot carronade muzzles, that seemed to gasp for it with their red tompions stuck out like tongues. The very look of the lifting blue water on the shady side was refreshing, and the brighter the light got, _it_ grew the darker blue. You listened for every cool splash of it on the bends, and every rustle of the canvass aloft; and instead of thinking, as the landsmen did, of green leaves and a lazy nook for shelter, why, to my fancy there's a deuced sigh more satisfaction in good _dark blue_, with a spray over the cat-head to show you're going, and with somewhat to go for! For want of better, one would have given his ears to jump in head-foremost, and have a first-rate bathe--the very sea itself kept rising up alongside to make an easy dive for one, and sinking into little round troughs again, where the surges would have sprinkled over your head. Now and then a bigger wave than ordinary would go swelling up, and out sprang a whole glittering shower of flying-fish, freckling the dark side with drops, and went flittering over into the next, or skimming the crests out of sight into a hollow. The writers and cadets were in high feather at knowing they were in the same latitude as India, and appeared in all sorts of straw hats, white trousers, and white jackets. Ford had left off talking of going aloft for a while, to flourish about his swimming--when he looked over with the surgeon into the smooth of a hollow, and saw something big and green, like all immense cucumber, floating along within a fathom or two of the ship, deep down in the blue water. While the griffin asked what it was, a little ripple broke above, a wet black horn came right out of it, and two devilish round eyes glared up at us ahead of it, as we leant over the quarter, set wide in a broad black snout, shaped like a gravedigger's shovel; then it sank away into the next wave. Ford shivered, in spite of the heat. "The devil?" inquired one of the writers, coolly, to the surgeon. "Not just him," said the Scotchman; "it's only the first _shark_!"

The young ladies, in their white dresses, now made you think of angels gliding about: as to the only one I had an eye for, by this time it wasn't of not seeing her often enough I had to complain, as she seemed to delight in nothing else but being somewhere or other upon deck; first one part of the ship, then another, as if to see how different the look-out could be made, or to watch something in the waves or the horizon. Instead of sitting with a needle or a book, like the rest, with the corner of one eye toward the gentlemen, or talking and giggling away at no allowance, she would be noticing a man aloft as if she were there herself, or trying to see past a sail, as if she fancied there was something strange on the other side of it. The rest of the girls appeared shy of her at first, no doubt on account of the Judge's separate quarters and his grandee style; next, they made acquaintance, she speaking and smiling just as if she had known them before; then, again, most of them seemingly got jealous because the cadets squinted after her; while old Rollock said Miss Hyde would be the beauty on Chowringee Course, and the first officer was eternally pointing out things to her, like a showman at a fair. However, she seemed not to mind it at all, either way: those that did talk to her would scarce hear her answer ere they lost her, and there she was, looking quietly down by herself into the ripples alongside; a minute after, she would be half-playing with little Tommy, and making companions of Tommy's young sisters, to see the sheep, the pigs, and the cow, or feed the poultry. As for the handsome "first officer," when he caught occasion for his politeness, she took it graciously enough, and listened to all he said; till, of a sudden, a smile would break over her face, and she seemed to me to put him off as easy as a duchess--on the score, it might be, of the Judge's looking for her off the poop, or something else of the kind. 'Twas the more curious how much at home she seemed amongst the men at work, when she chanced to go "forward" with Tommy and his sisters, as they skipped hither and thither: the rough, blue-shirted fellows took the quids out of their cheeks as soon as they saw the party coming from aft, and began to smirk, shoving the tar-buckets and ropes aside. One forenoon, an old lady under the poop awning, where she and her daughter were sewing together at a bright strip of needlework, asked me to hold her woollen yarns for her as she balled them off--being the red coat for a sepoy killing a tiger, which her daughter was making in yellow. I couldn't well refuse, seeing that amongst the ladies I was reckoned a mild, quiet young man. Even in these days, I must say I had a good deal of that look, and at home they used always to call me "quiet Ned." My mother, good soul, never would believe I broke windows, killed cats, or fought, and the mystery to her always is _why_ the neighbours had a spite at me; for if I had been a wild boy, she said, or as noisy as little Brown next door, why she wouldn't have objected to my going to sea!--that noisy little Brown, by the bye, is a fat banker. So in I had to stick my thumbs at arms'-length, and stoop down to the old lady, the more with a will since I guessed what they were talking of. "Well though, Kate," continued the old lady, winding away at the thread, "you cannot deny her to be a charming creature, my love?" "Oh, if you mean _pretty_!" said the girl, "I don't _want_ to deny it--not _I_, ma'am!--why should I, indeed?" "Pity she's a little light-headed," said her mother in a musing way. "_Affected_, you mean, mother!" said Miss Fortescue, "and haughty." "Do you know, Kate," replied the old lady, sighing, "I fear she'll soon _go_ in India!" "_Go?_" said the daughter sharply. "Yes; she won't stand the hot season as I did--these flighty girls never do. Poor thing! she certainly hasn't _your_ stamina now, my love!" Here Miss Fortescue bit her lip, tossed her head, and was saying that wasn't what she cared about, though in fact she looked ready to cry; when just at the moment I saw Lota Hyde herself half above the little gallery stair, gazing straight at me, for the first time, too; a curious kind of half-smile on her face, as I stood with my paws out, the old lady jerking the yarn off my wrists, and I staring right over her big bonnet at the sky astern of the awning, pretending not to listen. All at once my mouth fell, and before she could turn her face away from the funny countenance I no doubt put on, I saw her cheek rosy and her eyes sparkle with laughter, instead of seeming like one to die soon. For my