embellish the commander of this ship resembling
a mountain, and desired to imitate them—

Tickell. Saw what a good man the captain is,
and wanted to be like him—

Vespasian. The darned old cuss.

Ramgolam. Seeing him often convey his hand
to his bosom, I ascribed his unparalleled
excellence to the possession of some sovereign
talisman. (Tickell managed to translate this
sentence all but the word talisman, which he
rendered—with all a translator's caution—
"article.") Finding him about to depart to the
regions of the blessed, where such auxiliaries are
not needed, and being eager to emulate his
perfections here below, I came softly to the place
where he lay—

Tickell. When I saw him going to slip his
cable, I wanted to be as good a fellow as he is, so
I crept alongside—

Ramgolam. And gently, and without force,
made myself proprietor of the amulet, and
inheritor of a good man's qualities—

Tickell. And quietly boned the article, and
the captain's virtues. I don't know what the
beggar means.

Ramgolam. Then a traitor with a dark skin, but
darker soul—

Tickell. Then another black hearted nigger—

Ramgolam. Came furiously and misappropriated
the charm thus piously obtained—

Tickell. Ran in and stole it from me.

Ramgolam. And bereft me of the excellences I
was inheriting: and—

Here Sharpe interrupted the dialogue by
putting the misappropriator of other men's
virtues in irons: and the surgeon insisted on
the cabin being cleared. But Dodd would not
part with the three friends yet; he begged them
to watch him, and see nobody else came to take
his children's fortune.

"I'll sink or swim with it; but, oh, I doubt
we shall have no luck while it is aboard me. I
never had a Pirate alongside before, in all these
years. What is this?—here's something in it
now; something hard—something heavy: and—
why, it is a bullet!"

On this announcement, an eager inspection
took place: and, sure enough, a bullet had passed
through Dodd's coat, and waistcoat, &c., and
through the oilskin, and the leather pocket-book,
and just dented the " Hard Cash;" no more.

There was a shower of comments and
congratulations.

The effect of this discovery on the sick man's
spirits was remarkable. " I was a villain to belie
it," said he. " It is my wife's, and my children's;
and it has saved my life for them."

He kissed it, and placed it in his bosom, and
soon after sunk into a peaceful slumber. The
excitement had not the ill effect the surgeon feared:
it somewhat exhausted him; and he slept long:
but, on awakening, was pronounced out of
danger. To tell the truth, the tide had turned
in his favour overnight; and it was to convey
the good news on deck the surgeon had left
him.

While Dodd was recovering, the Agra was
beating westward, with light but contrary winds:
and a good month elapsed without any incident
affecting the Hard Cash, whose singular
adventures I have to record. In this dearth
please put up with a little characteristic trifle,
which did happen one moonlight night. Mr.
Fullalove lay coiled below decks in deep abstraction
meditating a patent: and, being in shadow
and silent, he saw Vespasian in the moonlight
creeping on all fours like a guilty thing into the
bedroom of Colonel Kenealy, then fast asleep.
A horrible suspicion thrilled through Fullalove:
a suspicion he waited grimly to verify.

The transatlantic Mixture, Fullalove, was not
merely an inventor a philanthrope a warrior a
preacher a hunter a swimmer a fiddler a sharp
fellow a good fellow a Puritan and a Bohemian;
he was also a Theorist: and his Theory, which
dub we

                   THE AFRICAN THEORY,

had two branches. 1. That the races of men
started equal: but accident upon accident had
walked some tribes up a ladder of civilisation,
and kicked others down it, and left others
standing at the foot.

2. That the good work of centuries could be
done, at a pinch, in a few generations, by artificial
condensation of the favourable circumstances.
For instance, secure this worker in Ebony 150
years' life, and he would sign a penal bond to
produce Negroes of the fourth descent, equal in
mind to the best contemporary white. " You can
breed Brains," said he "under any skin, as
inevitably as Fat. It takes time and the right
crosses; but so does Fat; or rather it did; for
Fat is an institution now." And here our
Republican must have a slap at thrones;
"Compare," said he, " the opportunities of these
distinguished Gentlemen and Ladies with their acts!
Their seats have been high, but their minds low,
I swan. They have been breeders for ages: and
known the two rudiments of the science; have
crossed and crossed for grenadiers, race-horses,
poultry, and prize bullocks; and bred in and
in for fools; but which of them has ever aspired
to breed a Newton, a Pascal, a Shakespeare, a
Solon, a Raphael? Yet all these were results to
be obtained by the right crosses, as surely as a
swift horse or a circular sow. Now fancy breeding
short-horns when you might breed long
heads." So Vespasian was to engender Young
Africa; he was to be first elevated morally and
intellectually as high as he would go, and, then
set to breed; his partner, of course to be elected
by Fullalove, and educated as high, as she would
consent to without an illicit connexion with the
Experimentalist. He would be down on their
Pickaninnies, before the parents could transfer
the remnant of their own weaknesses to them,
polysyllables included; and would polish these
ebony chips: and, at the next cross, reckoned to