Like most aquiline women, she was born to
domineer a bit; and, for the last ten years
Orientals cringing at her knee, and European
flattering at her ear, had nursed this quality
high, and spoiled her with all their might. A
similar process had been applied to her boy
Frederick from infancy; he was now nearly
six: arrogance and caprice shone so in both their
sallow faces, and spoke so in every gesture, that,
as they came on board, Sharpe, a reader of
passengers, whispered the second mate:
" Bayliss, we have shipped the devil."

"And a cargo of his imps," grunted Mr
Bayliss.

Mr. Fullalove was a methodist parson— to the
naked eye: grave, sober, lean, lank-haired. But
some men are hidden fires. Fullalove was one
of the extraordinary products of an extraordinary
nation, the United States of America. He was
an engineer for one thing, and an inventive and
practical mechanician; held two patents of his
own creating, which yielded him a good income
both at home and in Great Britain. Such results
are seldom achieved without deep study and
seclusion: and accordingly Joshua Fullalove,
when the inventive fit was on, would be buried
deep as Archimedes for a twelvemonth, burning
the midnight oil: then, his active element
predominating, the pale student would dash into the
forest or the prairie, with a rifle and an Indian,
and come out bronzed, and more or less
bepanthered or bebuffaloed; thence invariably to sea
for a year or two: there, Anglo-Saxon to the
backbone, his romance had ever an eye to
business; he was always after foreign mechanical
inventions— he was now importing an excellent
one from Japan — and ready to do lucrative feats
of knowledge: thus he bought a Turkish ship
at the bottom of the Dardanelles for twelve
hundred dollars, raised her cargo (hardware), and
sold it for six thousand dollars; then weighed
the empty ship, pumped her, repaired her, and
navigated her himself into Boston harbour,
Massachusetts. On the way he rescued, with
his late drowned ship, a Swedish vessel, and
received salvage. He once fished eighty elephants'
tusks out of a craft foundered in the Firth of
Forth, to the disgust of elder Anglo-Saxons
looking on from the shore. These unusual
pursuits were varied by a singular recreation: he
played at elevating the African character to
European levels. With this view he had bought
Vespasian for eighteen hundred dollars; whereof
anon. America is fertile in mixtures: what do
we not owe her? Sherry cobbler, gin sling,
cocktail, mint julep, brandy smash, sudden death,
eye openers. Well, one day she outdid herself;
and mixed Fullalove: Quaker, Nimrod, Archimede,
Philanthropist, decorous Red Rover, and
What Not.

The passenger boats cast loose.

"All hands make sail!"

The boatswain piped, the light-heeled topsmen
sped up the ratlines, and lay out on the yards,
while all on deck looked up, as usual, to see
them work. Out bellied sail after sail aloft; the
ship came curtseying round to the southward,
spread her snowy pinions high and wide, and
went like a bird over the wrinkled sea—homeward
bound.

It was an exhilarating start, and all faces were
bright; but one. The captain looked somewhat
grave and thoughtful, and often scanned the
horizon with his glass; he gave polite but very
short answers to his friend Colonel Kenealy
firing nothings in his ear; and sent for the
gunner.

While that personage, a crusty old Niler,
called Monk, is cleaning himself to go on the
quarter deck, peep we into Captain Dodd's
troubled mind, and into the circumstances which
connect him with the heart of this story, despite
the twelve thousand miles of water between him
and the lovers at Barkington.

It had always been his pride to lay by money
for his wife and children, and, under advice of an
Indian friend, he had, during the last few years,
placed considerable sums, at intervals, in a great
Calcutta house, which gave eight per cent for
deposits: swelled by fresh capital, and such high
interest, the hoard grew fast. When his old
ship, sore battered off the Cape, was condemned
by the Company's agents at Canton, he sailed to
Calcutta, intending to return thence to England
as a passenger. But, while he was at Calcutta,
the greatest firm there suspended payment, carrying
astonishment and dismay into a hundred
families. At such moments the press and the
fireside ring for a little while with the commonsense
cry,* "Good interest means bad security."
As for Dodd, who till then had revered all these
great houses with nautical, or childlike, confidence,
a blind terror took the place of blind
trust in him; he felt guilty towards his children
for risking their money (he had got to believe it
was theirs, not his), and vowed, if he could only
get hold of it once more, he would never trust a
penny of it out of his own hands again; except,
perhaps, to the Bank of England. But should
he ever get it? it was a large sum. He went to
Messrs. Anderson and Anderson, and drew for
his fourteen thousand pounds. To his dismay,
but hardly to his surprise, the clerks looked at
one another, and sent the cheque in to some
inner department. Dodd was kept waiting.
His heart sank within him: there was a hitch.

Meantime came a government officer, and paid
in an enormous sum in notes and mercantile bills,
principally the latter.

Presently Dodd was invited into the manager's
room.

"Leaving the country, Captain Dodd?"

"Yes, sir."

"You had better take some of your money in
bills at sight on London."

I would rather have notes, sir," faltered
Dodd.

* The Duke of Wellington (the iron one) is the
author of this saying.