Dodd took no notice of this, and with a
patience few nautical commanders would have
shown, endeavoured to make her see that he was
obliged to give Macao shoals a wide berth, or
cast away the ship. She would not see it.
When Dodd saw she wanted, not an explanation,
but a grievance, he ceased to thwart her. " I am
neglecting my duties to no purpose," said he,
and left her without ceremony. This was a fresh
offence; and, as he went out, she declared open
war. And she made it too from that hour: a
war of pins and needles.

Dodd went on the gun deck and found that
the defence of the ship had, as usual in these
peaceful days, been sacrificed to the cargo. Out
of twenty eighteen pounders she carried on that
deck, he cleared three, and that with difficulty.
To clear any more he must have sacrificed either
merchandise or water: and he was not the man
to do either on the mere chance of a danger so
unusual as an encounter with a pirate. He was
a merchant captain, not a warrior.

Meantime the Agra had already shown him
great sailing qualities: the log was hove at
sundown and gave eleven knots; so that with a
good breeze abaft few fore and aft-rigged pirates
could overhaul her. And this wind carried her
swiftly past one nest of them, at all events;
the Ladrone isles. At nine p.m. all the lights
were ordered out. Mrs. Beresford had brought
a novel on board, and refused to comply; the
master-at-arms insisted; she threatened him
with the vengance of the Company, the premier,
and the nobility and gentry of the British realm.
The master-at-arms, finding he had no chance in
argument, doused the glim— pitiable resource of
a weak disputant— then basely fled the rhetorical
consequences.

The northerly breeze died out, and light
variable winds baffled the ship. It was the 6th
April ere she passed the Macclesfield Bank in
latitude 16. And now they sailed for many days
out of sight of land; Dodd's chest expanded:
his main anxiety at this part of the voyage lay
in the state cabin; of all the perils of the sea
none shakes a sailor like fire. He set a watch
day and night on that spoiled child.

On the 1st May they passed the great
Nantuna, and got among the Bornese and Malay
islands: at which the captain's glass began to
sweep the horizon again: and night and day at
the dizzy foretop gallant mast-head he perched
an Eye.

They crossed the line in longitude 107, with
a slight breeze, but soon fell into the Doldrums.
A dead calm, and nothing to do but kill time.
Dodd had put down Neptune: that old blackguard
could no longer row out on the ship's port
side and board her on the starboard, pretending
to come from ocean's depths; and shave the
novices with a rusty hoop and dab a soapy brush
in their mouths. But champagne popped, the
sexes flirted, and the sailors span fathomless
yarns, and danced rattling hornpipes; fiddled to
by the grave Fullalove. " If there is a thing I
can dew, it's fiddle," said he. He and his friend,
as he systematically called Vespasian, taught the
crew Yankee steps, and were beloved. One
honest saltatory British tar offered that western
pair his grog for a week. Even Mrs. Beresford
emerged, and walked the deck, quenching her
austere regards with a familiar smile on Colonel
Kenealy, her escort: this gallant good-natured
soldier flattered her to the nine, and, finding her
sweeten with his treacle, tried to reconcile her to
his old friend Dodd. Straight she soured, and
forbade the topic imperiously.

By this time the mates and midshipmen of the
Agra had fathomed their captain. Mr. Tickell
delivered the mind of the united midshipmen
when he proposed Dodd's health in their mess-
room, " as a navigator, a mathematician, a
seaman, a gentleman, and a brick, with 3 times 3."

Dodd never spoke to his officers like a ruffian,
nor yet palavered them: but he had a very
pleasant way of conveying appreciation of an
officer's zeal, by a knowing nod with a kindly
smile on the heels of it. As for the men, they
seldom come in contact with the captain of a well
officered ship: this crew only knew him at first as
a good tempered soul, who didn't bother about
nothing. But one day, as they lay becalmed
south of the line, a jolly foretopman came on the
quarter deck with a fid of soup, and saluting and
scraping, first to the deck, then to the captain,
asked him if he would taste that.

"Yes, my man. Smoked!"

"Like——and blazes, your honour, axing
your pardon, and the deck's."

"Young gentleman!" said Dodd to Mr.
Meredith, a midshipman, " be so good as to send
the cook aft!"

The cook came, and received, not an oath nor
a threat, but a remonstrance, and a grim warning.

In the teeth of this he burnt the soup horribly
the very next day. The crew sent the lucky
foretopman aft again. He made his scrape and
presented his fid. The captain tasted the soup,
and sent Mr. Grey to bid the boatswain's mate
pipe the hands on deck and bring the cook aft.

"Quartermaster, unsling a fire-bucket and fill
it from the men's kids: Mr. Tickell, see the
cook swallow his own mess. Bosen's mate, take
a bight of the flying jib sheet, stand over him,
and start him if he dallies with it!" With this
the captain went below, and the cook, supping
at the bucket, delivered himself as follows:
"Well, ye lubbers, it is first—rate. There's no
burn in it. It goes down like oil. Curse your
lady-like stomachs; you ain't fit for a ship; why
don't ye go ashore and man a gingerbread coach
and feed off French frogs and Italian baccy pipe
stems? (Whack.) "What the—— is that for?"

Boatswain' s mate. Sup more, and jaw less!

"Well, I am supping as fast as I can. ( Whack,
whack.) Bloody end to ye, what are ye about?
(Whack, whack, whack.) Oh, Joe, Lord bless
you I can't eat any more of it. (Whack.) I'll