tail of my eye, but my friend the Kitmagar salaaming to Mr Snout, by the break of the quarter-deck. 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 curiesity 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 impudent 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 sabib not i-sleep apter he dine? —veri 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 roundhouse door, with a pair of turned-up yellow slippers. Take them up with my salaam to that gentleman there," said Sir Charles, in Hindostanee, "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 ladderhead, 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 tyranny."

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 heelover 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 nightwatch 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 windowall 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 stateroom 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 heaveover 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 for smudder 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 oncewhich 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

"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

แ

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, 66 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, Tomtake care you don't bowse up your jib too much within hail of him! Mind, I gave your name, both to the headsteward 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-take to it, 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 an 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 someevery 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 can 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 seaas I am! You should study the craft, Bob, my boy! I'll teach you to go aloft. Ionly 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 horsemarines." "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* 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