while this wicked proceeding was going on,
are yet in my ears. My torments, as such
extraordinary sufferings generally are, were
happily of short duration, for, as the oar
which had been so distressingly "put in"
was about as useful as a lucifer-match might
have been, employed for the same purpose, it
was not long in being withdrawn. I
afterwards found that my dear friend Purkis,
knowing my regard for appearances, had
caused its use to be discontinued in simple
and merciful consideration of what my
feelings would be on seeing it. But the way in
which that lugger diminished its rate of
movement—if that could be diminished
which did not seem to exist—after it had got
to that particular point when the faces of my
unfortunate companions became visible. The
gloom, the sullenness, nay, the dusky savageness,
if I may be allowed the expression,
which characterised those faces. These are
things terrible to dwell on, but which, in a
faithful narrative, must not be wholly passed
over in silence. Long coming in! Why
they were so long coming in, that, after they
had got within easy talking distance, it
became necessary at intervals to enter into
light conversation with them for halt an hour
or so while they did the last fifty yards, to
relieve the embarrassment of the scene.

Well, well, ultimately some mysterious
power of suction on the part of the pier, or
the attraction of the nails of the vessel to the
pole—for they were going north—or some
other hidden means of propulsion, did end in
bringing them within boat-hook reach of us,
and they were hauled in at last. But my
degradation was not to end even there. The
whole mass of human beings gathered together
to witness the arrival of the Dunkerque
party, had now assembled on the side of the
pier against which the Pride—the Humiliation
it ought to have been called—was
moored. From this exalted post the
population—and amongst them that pretty girl
with the black eyes, who I once thought—
but no matter—I say, the whole population
looked straight down upon the lugger, raking
with their eyes, and the more distant spectators
with opera glasses, the whole interior of
the hull.

"Well," you will say, "I see nothing in
that."

"Nothing!" Was it nothing, that the
revenue officers came now on board of her,
causing the unfortunate men in whose
destiny my own was so deeply involved, to
make disclosures which I shudder to think
of? Was it nothing, to see three carpet-
bags, in which you were in a manner mixed
up, yawning beneath the gaze of the multitude,
and under the eyes of that—but I will
not speak of her—when it is a question of
such things as the opening of those bags
revealed—was it nothing to see the mass of
dirty linen which those accursed wallets
contained, disgorged beneath your eyes? Was it
nothing, to see fluttering in the breeze that
eternal red shirt of Purkis's, which somebody
has darned on the shoulder, where the braces
come, with pale-blue worsted, and which
somebody has not darned where that great
hole in the back lets the revenue officer's
hand suddenly and unexpectedly through—a
circumstance so suspicious in itself, as to
cause him to examine the garment again, and
again to expose its weaknesses to the throng
above, among whom irrepressible symptoms
of giggling now began to develope themselves?
Was it nothing, to see those tattered trousers
of my half-brother's—how glad I felt at the
moment that he was not my whole brother—
was it nothing, to see those tattered trousers
which I have so often entreated him to
give away, extended on the deck while their
pockets were turned inside out?

But it is over, and the three voyagers
ascend the pier—silent, dirty, ferocious. In
vain do I try to lure them into any account
of their voyage as we walk home. "Charming
sail there!" from the voice of Purkis, is all
the information I can get, and even this is
said in a dreamy and undecided manner.
There is a suspicious eagerness, too, in Purkis
to question me as to what I have been about
which is most extraordinary, considering
that I have been vegetating at a watering-
place, while he has been engaged in a cruise,
as I fondly supposed, ot surpassing interest
and excitement.

Taking all these things together, a horrible
suspicion began dimly to suggest itself to
me. It came upon me slowly, and I fought
it off; but it returned again and again. Just
Heaven! I thought, suppose the Dunkerque
expedition has turned out a failure!—and
after my half-brother having gone there with
the intention of introducing a chapter on
the subject into his work on true and
false Shandyisim—and after my having
been requested to get up the subject of
Dunkerque when in London, which I did,
spending four long days at the Museum in
Dunkerquian researches.

The continued depression of my companions
so confirmed my worst suspicions on this
subject that, being of a humane and considerate
disposition, I forbore to administer those
probing questions which were on my tongue's
end, lest I should wound them in a tender point.
Yet I was bursting in ignorance, and far from
satisfied with the small oozings of
information which occasionally dripped out in the
course of that day's dinner.

It oozed out that the French authorities at
Dunkerque had behaved in a very unsatisfactory
manner. They had boarded the boat;
insisted that, since she had got passengers on
board, she was, necessarily, a passage-boat;
had, consequently, lost her claim of a pilot-
lugger to come into the port free of expense,
and must pay two pounds three shillings for
harbour-dues—the French measurement
attributing ten tons burden more to the lugger