"Oh, bills by Oliveira upon Baring are just as
good, even without our endorsement. However,
you can have half and half. Calcutta does but
little in English bank-notes, you know."

They gave him his money. The bills were all
manifestly good. But he recognised one of them
as having just been paid in by the civilian. He
found himself somehow safe in the street clutching
the cash, with one half of his great paternal
heart on fire, and the other half freezing. He
had rescued his children's fortune; but he had
seen destruction graze it. The natural chill at
being scraped by peril soon passed, the triumphant
glow remained. The next sentiment was
precaution; he filled with it to the brim; he
went and bought a great broad pocket-book with
a key to it; though he was on dry land, he
covered it with oiled silk against the water; and
sewed the whole thing to his flannel waistcoat,
and felt for it with his hand a hundred times a
day: the fruit of his own toil, his children's
hoard, the rescued treasure he was to have the
joy of bringing home safe to the dear partner of
all his joys.

Unexpectedly, he was ordered out to Canton
to sail the Agra to the Cape. Then a novel and
strange feeling came over him like a cloud; that
feeling was, a sense of personal danger: not
that the many perils of the deep were new to
him: he had faced them this five-and-twenty
years: but till now they were little present to
his imagination; they used to come; be encountered:
be gone: but now, though absent, they
darkened the way. It was the pocket-book.
The material treasure, the hard cash, which had
lately set him in a glow, seemed now to load his
chest and hang heavy round the neck of his
heart. Sailors are more or less superstitious:
and men are creatures of habit, even in their
courage. Now David had never gone to sea with a
lot of money on him before. As he was a stout-
hearted man, these vague forebodings would,
perhaps, have cleared away with the bustle, when
the Agra set her studding sails off Macao, but
for a piece of positive intelligence he had picked
up at Lin-Tin. The Chinese admiral had warned
him of a pirate, a daring pirate, who had been lately
cruising in these waters: first heard of south the
line: but had, since, taken a Russian ship at the
very mouth of the Canton river, murdered the
crew in sight of land, and sold the women for
slaves, or worse. Dodd asked for particulars:
was he a Ladroner, a Malay, a Bornese? In
what latitude was he to be looked for? The
admiral on this examined his memoranda: by
these it appeared little was known as yet about
the miscreant, except that he never cruised long
on one ground; the crew was a mixed one: the
captain was believed to be a Portuguese, and to
have a consort commanded by his brother: but
this was doubtful; at all events the pair had
never been seen at work together.

The gunner arrived and saluted the quarter
deck; the captain on this saluted him, and
beckoned him to the weather side. On this the
other officers kept religiously to leeward.

"Mr. Monk," said Dodd, " you will clean and
prepare all the small arms directly."

"Ay, ay, sir!" said the old Niler, with a gleam
of satisfaction.

"How many of your deck guns are serviceable?"

This simple question stirred up in one moment
all the bile in the poor old gentleman's
nature.

"My deck guns! serviceable! how the——
can they, when that son of a sea cook your third
mate has been and lashed the water butts to
their breechings, and jammed his gear in between
their nozzles, till they can't breathe, poor things,
far less bark. I wish he was lashed between the
devil's hind hocks with a red hot cable as tight
as he has jammed my guns."

"Be so good as not to swear, Mr. Monk," said
Dodd. " At your age, sir, I look to you to set
an example to the petty officers."

"Well, I won't swear no more, sir: d— d if
I do!" He added very loudly, and with a seeming
access of ire, " and I ax your pardon, captain,,
and the deck's."

When a man has a deep anxiety, some human
midge or mosquito buzzes at him. It is a rule. To
Dodd, heavy with responsibility, and a dark
misgiving he must not communicate, came delicately,
and by degrees, and with a semigenuflexion
every three steps, one like a magpie; and, putting
his hands together, as our children do to approach
the Almighty, delivered himself thus, in
modulated tones, and good Hindoostanee, "The
Daughter of Light, in whose beams I,
Ramgolam, bask, glows with an amicable desire to
see the lord commander of the ship resembling;
a mountain; and to make a communication."

Taught by sad experience how weighty are the
communications the daughters of light pour into
nautical commanders at sea, Dodd hailed Mr.
Tickell, a midshipman, and sent him down to the
lady's cabin. Mr. Tickell soon came back reddish,
but grinning, to say that nothing less than the
captain would do.

Dodd sighed, and dismissed Monk with a
promise to inspect the gun deck himself; then
went down to Mrs. Beresford and found her
indignant. Why had he stopped the ship miles
and miles from Macao, and given her the trouble
and annoyance of a voyage in that nasty little
boat? Dodd opened his great brown eyes,,
"Why, madam, it is shoal water off Macao;
we dare not come in."

"No evasion, sir. What have I to do with
your shoal water? it was laziness, and want of
consideration for a lady who has rented half your
ship."

"Nothing of the kind, madam, I assure you."

"Are you the person they call Gentleman
Dodd?"

"Yes."

"Then don't contradict a lady! or I shall
take the liberty to dispute your title."