house afire? If I have, why don't you give me in charge, and try it? But to take away the character of a lad that's been a good servant to you, because he can't afford to stand in his own light for your good, what a injury it is, and what a bad return for faithful service! This is the way young coves is spiled and drove wrong. I wonder at you, Captain, I do." All of which the Grinder howled forth in a lachrymose whine, and backing carefully toward the door. "And so you've got another berth, have you, my lad?" said the Captain, eying him intently.

"Yes, Captain, since you put it in that shape, I have got another berth," cried Rob, backing more and

"Oh, it's very hard upon a cove, Captain," cried the tender Rob, injured and indignant in a moment, "that he can't give lawful warning, without being frowned at in that way, and called a deserter. You haven't any right to call a poor cove names, Captain. It ain't because I'm a servant and you're a master, that you're to go and libel me. What wrong have I done? Come, Captain, let me know what my crime is, will you?"

The stricken Grinder wept, and put his coat-cuff in his eye.

"Come, Captain," cried the injured youth, "give my crime a name! What have I been and done? Have I stolen any of the property? have I set the

66

more; a better berth than I've got here, and one where I don't so much as want your good word, Captain, which is fort'nate for me, after all the dirt you've throw'd at me, because I'm poor, and can't afford to stand in my own light for your good. Yes, I have got another berth; and if it wasn't for leaving you unprovided, Captain, I'd go to it now, sooner than I'd take them names from you, because I'm poor, and can't afford to stand in my own light for your good. Why do you reproach me for being poor, and not standing in my own light for your good, Captain? How can you so demean yourself?"

"Look ye here, my boy," replied the peaceful Captain," don't you pay out no more of them words."

"Well, then, don't you pay in no more of your words, Captain," retorted the roused innocent, getting louder in his whine, and backing into the shop. "I'd sooner you took my blood than my character." "Because," pursued the Captain, calmly, "you have heerd, maybe, of such a thing as a rope's end." "Oh, have I though, Captain ?” cried the taunting Grinder. "No I haven't. I never heerd of any such a article!"

"Well," said the Captain, "it's my belief as you'll know more about it pretty soon, if you don't keep a bright look-out. I can read your signals, my lad. You may go."

"Oh! I may go at once, may I, Captain ?” cried Rob, exulting in his success. "But mind! I never asked to go at once, Captain. You are not to take away my character again, because you send me off of your own accord. And you're not to stop any of my wages, Captain!"

His employer settled the last point by producing the tin canister and telling the Grinder's money out in full upon the table. Rob, sniveling and sobbing, and grievously wounded in his feelings, took up the pieces one by one, with a sob and a snivel for each, and tied them up separately in knots in his pockethandkerchief; then he ascended to the roof of the house and filled his hat and pockets with pigeons; then came down to his bed under the counter and made up his bundle, sniveling and sobbing louder, as if he were cut to the heart by old associations; then he whined, "Good-night, Captain. I leave you without malice!" and then, going out upon the doorstep, pulled the little Midshipman's nose as a parting indignity, and went away down the street grinning triumph.

The Captain, left to himself, resumed his perusal of the news as if nothing unusual or unexpected had taken place, and went reading on with the greatest assiduity. But never a word did Captain Cuttle understand, though he read a vast number, for Rob the Grinder was scampering up one column and down another all through the newspaper.

It is doubtful whether the worthy Captain had ever felt himself quite abandoned until now; but now, old Sol Gills, Walter, and Heart's Delight were lost to him indeed, and now Mr. Carker deceived and jeered him cruelly. They were all represented in the false Rob, to whom he had held forth many a time on the recollections that were warm within him; he had believed in the false Rob, and had been glad to believe in him; he had made a companion of him as the last of the old ship's company; he had taken the command of the little Midshipman with him at his right hand; he had meant to do his duty by him, and had felt almost as kindly toward the boy as if they had been shipwrecked and cast upon a desert place together. And now, that the false Rob had brought distrust, treachery, and meanness into the very parlor, which was a kind of sacred place, Captain Cuttle felt as if the parlor might have gone down next, and not surprised him much by its sinking, or given him any very great concern.

Therefore Captain Cuttle read the newspaper with profound attention and no comprehension, and therefore Captain Cuttle said nothing whatever about Rob to himself, or admitted to himself that he was think

225

ing about him, or would recognize in the most distant manner that Rob had any thing to do with his feeling as lonely as Robinson Crusoe.

In the same composed, business-like way, the Captain stepped over to Leadenhall Market in the dusk, and effected an arrangement with a private watchman on duty there to come and put up and take down the shutters of the Wooden Midshipman every night and morning. He then called in at the eatinghouse to diminish by one half the daily rations theretofore supplied to the Midshipman, and at the public-house to stop the traitor's beer. "My young man," said the Captain, in explanation to the young lady at the bar, "my young man having bettered himself, miss." Lastly, the Captain resolved to take possession of the bed under the counter, and to turn in there o' nights instead of up stairs, as sole guardian of the property.

From this bed Captain Cuttle daily rose thenceforth, and clapped on his glazed hat at six o'clock in the morning, with the solitary air of Crusoe finishing his toilet with his goat-skin cap; and although his fears of a visitation from the savage tribe, MacStinger, were somewhat cooled, as similar apprehensions on the part of that lone mariner used to be by the lapse of a long interval without any symptoms of the cannibals, he still observed a regular routine of defensive operations, and never encountered a bonnet without previous survey from his castle of retreat. In the mean time (during which he received no call from Mr. Toots, who wrote to say he was out of town) his own voice began to have a strange sound in his ears; and he acquired such habits of profcund meditation from much polishing and stowing away of the stock, and from much sitting behind the counter reading, or looking out of window, that the red rim made on his forehead by the hard glazed hat sometimes ached again with excess of reflection.

The year being now expired, Captain Cuttle deemed it expedient to open the packet; but as he had always designed doing this in the presence of Rob the Grinder, who had brought it to him, and as he had an idea that it would be regular and ship-shape to open it in the presence of somebody, he was sadly put to it for want of a witness. In this difficulty, he hailed one day with unusual delight the announcement in the Shipping Intelligence of the arrival of the Cautious Clara, Captain John Bunsby, from a coasting voyage; and to that philosopher immediately dispatched a letter by post, enjoining inviolable secrecy as to his place of residence, and requesting to be favored with an early visit in the evening

season.

Bunsby, who was one of those sages who act upon conviction, took some days to get the conviction thoroughly into his mind that he had received a letter to this effect. But when he had grappled with the fact, and mastered it, he promptly sent his boy with the message, "He's a-coming to-night." Who being instructed to deliver those words and disappear, fulfilled his mission like a tarry spirit charged with a mysterious warning.

The Captain, well pleased to receive it, made preparation of pipes and rum and water, and awaited his visitor in the back parlor. At the hour of eight, a deep lowing, as of a nautical Bull, outside the shop

door, succeeded by the knocking of a stick on the panel, announced to the listening ear of Captain Cuttle that Bunsby was alongside: whom he instantly admitted, shaggy and loose, and with his stolid mahogany visage, as usual, appearing to have no consciousness of any thing before it, but to be attentively observing something that was taking place in quite another part of the world.

"Bunsby," said the Captain, grasping him by the hand, "what cheer, my lad, what cheer?"

"Shipmet,” replied the voice within Bunsby, unaccompanied by any sign on the part of the Commander himself, "hearty, hearty."

"Bunsby!" said the Captain, rendering irrepressible homage to his genius, "here you are! a man as can give an opinion as is brighter than di'mondsand give me the lad with the tarry trowsers as shines to me like di'monds bright, for which you'll overhaul the Stanfell's Budget, and when found make a note. Here you are, a man as gave an opinion in this here very place, that has come true, every letter on it," which the Captain sincerely believed.

"Ay, ay?" growled Bunsby.

"Every letter," said the Captain.

"For why?" growled Bunsby, looking at his friend for the first time. "Which way? If so, why not? Therefore." With these oracular words--they seemed almost to make the Captain giddy; they launched him upon such a sea of speculation and conjecture -the sage submitted to be helped off with his pilotcoat, and accompanied his friend into the back parlor, where his hand presently alighted on the rumbottle, from which he brewed a stiff glass of grog; and presently afterward on a pipe, which he filled, lighted, and began to smoke.

Captain Cuttle, imitating his visitor in the matter of these particulars, though the rapt and imperturbable manner of the great Commander was far above his powers, sat in the opposite corner of the fireside, observing him respectfully, and as if he waited for some encouragement or expression of curiosity on Bunsby's part which should lead him to his own affairs. But as the mahogany philosopher gave no evidence of being sentient of any thing but warmth and tobacco, except once, when taking his pipe from his lips to make room for his glass, he incidentally remarked, with exceeding gruffness, that his name was Jack Bunsby-a declaration that presented but small opening for conversation-the Captain bespeaking his attention in a short complimentary exordium, narrated the whole history of Uncle Sol's departure, with the change it had produced in his own life and fortunes; and concluded by placing the packet on the table.

After a long pause, Mr. Bunsby nodded his head. "Open ?" said the Captain. Bunsby nodded again.

The Captain accordingly broke the seal, and disclosed to view two folded papers, of which he severally read the indorsements, thus: "Last Will and Testament of Solomon Gills." "Letter for Ned Cuttle."

Bunsby, with his eye on the coast of Greenland, seemed to listen for the contents. The Captain therefore hemmed to clear his throat, and read the letter aloud.

"My dear Ned Cuttle. When I left home for the West Indies-'"

Here the Captain stopped, and looked hard at Bunsby, who looked fixedly at the coast of Greenland.

"In forlorn search of intelligence of my dear boy, I knew that if you were acquainted with my design, you would thwart it, or accompany me; and therefore I kept it secret. If you ever read this letter, Ned, I am likely to be dead. You will easily forgive an old friend's folly then, and will feel for the restlessness and uncertainty in which he wandered away on such a wild voyage. So no more of that. I have little hope that my poor boy will ever read these words, or gladden your eyes with the sight of his frank face any more.' No, no; no more," said Captain Cuttle, sorrowfully meditating; There he lays, all his days-”

no more.

Mr. Bunsby, who had a musical ear, suddenly bellowed, "In the Bays of Biscay, oh!" which so affected the good Captain, as an appropriate tribute to departed worth, that he shook him by the hand in acknowledgment, and was fain to wipe his eyes.

"Well, well!" said the Captain, with a sigh, as the Lament of Bunsby ceased to ring and vibrate in the sky-light. "Affliction sore long time he bore, and let us overhaul the wollume, and there find it." 'Physicians," observed Bunsby, "was in vain.”

66

66

1166

‘Ay, ay, to be sure," said the Captain, "what's the good o' them in two or three hundred fathoms o' water!" Then returning to the letter, he read on: "But if he should be by when it is opened;"'" the Captain involuntarily looked round, and shook his head; "or should know of it at any other time;'" the Captain shook his head again; "my blessing on him! In case the accompanying paper is not legally written, it matters very little, for there is no one interested but you and he, and my plain wish is, that if he is living he should have what little there may be, and if (as I fear) otherwise, that you should have it, Ned. You will respect my wish, I know. God bless you for it, and for all your friendliness besides, to SOLOMON GILLS.' Bunsby!" said the Captain, appealing to him solemnly, "what do you make of this? There you sit, a man as has had Ins head broke from infancy up'ard, and has got a new opiuion into it at every seam as has been opened. Now, what do you make o' this?"

"If so be," returned Bunsby, with unusual promptitude, 66 as he's dead, my opinion is, he won't come back no more. If so be as he's alive, my opinion is, he will. Do I say he will? No. Why not? Because the bearings of this obserwation lays in the application on it."

"Bunsby!" said Captain Cuttle, who would seem to have estimated the value of his distinguished friend's opinions in proportion to the immensity of the difficulty he experienced in making any thing out of them; "Bunsby," said the Captain, quite confounded by admiration, "you carry a weight of mind easy, as would swamp one of my tonnage soon. But in regard o' this here will, I don't mean to take no steps toward the property-Lord forbid!-except to keep it for a more rightful owner; and I hope yet, as the rightful owner, Sol Gills, is living and'll come back, strange as it is that he ain't forwarded no dis

patches. Now, what is your opinion, Bunsby, as to stowing of these here papers away again, and marking outside as they was opened, such a day, in presence of John Bunsby and Ed'ard Cuttle?"

Bunsby, descrying no objection, on the coast of Greenland or elsewhere, to this proposal, it was carried into execution; and that great man, bringing his eye into the present for a moment, affixed his sign-manual to the cover, totally abstaining, with characteristic modesty, from the use of capital letters. Captain Cuttle, having attached his own lefthanded signature, and locked up the packet in the iron safe, entreated his guest to mix another glass and smoke another pipe; and doing the like himself, fell a-musing over the fire on the possible fortunes of the poor old Instrument-maker.

And now a surprise occurred, so overwhelming and terrific that Captain Cuttle, unsupported by the presence of Bunsby, must have sunk beneath it, and been a lost man from that fatal hour.

How the Captain, even in the satisfaction of admitting such a guest, could have only shut the door, and not locked it, of which negligence he was undoubtedly guilty, is one of those questions that must forever remain mere points of speculation, or vague charges against destiny. But by that unlocked door, at this quiet moment, did the fell MacStinger dash into the parlor, bringing Alexander MacStinger in her parental arms, and confusion and vengeance (not to mention Juliana MacStinger, and the sweet child's brother, Charles MacStinger, popularly known about the scenes of his youthful sports as Chowley) in her train. She came so swiftly and so silently, like a rushing air from the neighborhood of the East India Docks, that Captain Cuttle found himself in the very act of sitting looking at her, before the calm face with which he had been meditating, changed to one of horror and dismay.

But the moment Captain Cuttle understood the full extent of his misfortune, self-preservation dictated an attempt at flight. Darting at the little door which opened from the parlor on the steep little range of cellar-steps, the Captain made a rush, head foremost, at the latter, like a man indifferent to bruises and contusions, who only sought to hide himself in the bowels of the earth. In this gallant effort he would probably have succeeded, but for the affectionate dispositions of Juliana and Chowley, who pinning him by the legs-one of those dear children holding on to each-claimed him as their friend, with lamentable cries. In the mean time, Mrs. MacStinger, who never entered upon any action of importance without previously inverting Alexander MacStinger, to bring him within the range of a brisk battery of slaps, and then sitting him down to cool as the reader first beheld him, performed that solemn rite, as if on this occasion it were a sacrifice to the Furies; and having deposited the victim on the floor, made at the Captain with a strength of purpose that appeared to threaten scratches to the interposing Bunsby.

The cries of the two elder MacStingers, and the wailing of young Alexander, who may be said to have passed a piebald childhood, forasmuch as he was black in the face during one half of that fairy period of existence, combined to make this visita

227

tion the more awful. But when silence reigned again, and the Captain, in a violent perspiration, stood meekly looking at Mrs. MacStinger, its terrors were at their height.

"Oh, Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle!" said Mrs. MacStinger, making her chin rigid, and shaking it in unison with what, but for the weakness of her sex, might be described as her fist. "Oh, Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle, do you dare to look me in the face, and not be struck down in the herth!"

The Captain, who looked any thing but daring, feebly muttered "Stand by!"

"Oh I was a weak and trusting Fool when I took you under my roof, Cap'en Cuttle, I was!" cried Mrs. MacStinger. "To think of the benefits I've showered on that man, and the way in which I brought my children up to love and honor him as if he was a father to 'em, when there ain't a 'ousekeeper, no, nor a lodger in our street, don't know that I lost money by that man, and by his guzzlings and his muzzlings"-Mrs. MacStinger used the last word for the joint sake of alliteration and aggravation, rather than for the expression of any idea—“ and when they cried out one and all, shame upon him for putting upon an industrious woman, up early and late for the good of her young family, and keeping her poor place so clean that an individual might have ate his dinner, yes, and his tea too, if he was so disposed, off any one of the floors or stairs, in spite of all his guzzlings and his muzzlings, such was the care and pains bestowed upon him!"

Mrs. MacStinger stopped to fetch her breath; and her face flushed with triumph in this second happy introduction of Captain Cuttle's muzzlings.

"And he runs awa-a-a-ay!" cried Mrs. MacStinger, with a lengthening out of the last syllable that made the unfortunate Captain regard himself as the meanest of men; "and keeps away a twelvemonth! From a woman! Sitch is his conscience! He hasn't the courage to meet her hi-i-i-igh;" long syllable again; "but steals away, like a felion. Why, if that baby of mine," said Mrs. MacStinger, with sudden rapidity," was to offer to go and steal away, I'd do my duty as a mother by him, till he was covered with wales!"

The young Alexander, interpreting this into a positive promise, to be shortly redeemed, tumbled over with fear and grief, and lay upon the floor, exhibiting the soles of his shoes and making such a deafening outcry, that Mrs. MacStinger found it necessary to take him up in her arms, where she quieted him, ever and anon, as he broke out again, by a shake that seemed enough to loosen his teeth.

"A pretty sort of a man is Cap'en Cuttle," said Mrs. MacStinger, with a sharp stress on the first syllable of the Captain's name, "to take on for-and to lose sleep for-and to faint along of-and to think dead forsooth-and to go up and down the blessed town like a mad woman, asking questions after! Oh, a pretty sort of a man! Ha, ha, ha, ha! He's worth all that trouble and distress of mind, and much more. That's nothing, bless you! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Cap'en Cuttle," said Mrs. MacStinger, with severe reaction in her voice and manner, "I wish to know if you're a-coming home."

The frightened Captain looked into his hat, as if

he saw nothing for it but to put it on, and give himself up.

"Cap'en Cuttle," repeated Mrs. MacStinger, in the same determined manner, "I wish to know if you're a-coming home, sir."

The Captain seemed quite ready to go, but faintly suggested something to the effect of "not making so much noise about it."

"Ay, ay, ay," said Bunsby, in a soothing tone. "Awast, my lass, awast!"

"And who may YOU be, if you please!" retorted Mrs. MacStinger, with chaste loftiness. "Did you ever lodge at Number Nine, Brig Place, sir? My memory may be bad, but not with me, I think. There was a Mrs. Jollson lived at Number Nine before me, and perhaps you're mistaking me for her.

take them to her, and pacify her without appearing to utter one word. Presently he looked in with his pilot-coat on, and said, "Cuttle, I'm agoing to act as convoy home;" and Captain Cuttle, more to his confusion than if he had been put in irons himself, for safe transport to Brig Place, saw the family pacifically filing off, with Mrs. MacStinger at their head. He had scarcely time to take down his canister, and stealthily convey some money into the hands of Juliana MacStinger, his former favorite, and Chowley, who had the claim upon him that he was naturally of a maritime build, before the Midshipman was abandoned by them all; and Bunsby whispering that he'd carry on smart, and hail Ned Cuttle again before he went aboard, shut the door upon himself, as the last member of the party.

That is my only ways of accounting for your familiarity, sir."

"Come, come, my lass, awast, awast!" said Bunsby. Captain Cuttle could hardly believe it, even of this great man, though he saw it done with his waking eyes; but Bunsby, advancing boldly, put his shaggy blue arm round Mrs. MacStinger, and so softened her by his magic way of doing it, and by these few words-he said no more-that she melted into tears, after looking upon him for a few moments, and observed that a child might conquer her now, she was so low in her courage.

Speechless and utterly amazed, the Captain saw him gradually persuade this inexorable woman into the shop, return for rum-and-water and a candle,

Some uneasy ideas that he must be walking in his sleep, or that he had been troubled with phantoms, and not a family of flesh and blood, beset the Captain at first, when he went back to the little parlor and found himself alone. Illimitable faith in, and immeasurable admiration of, the Commander of the Cautious Clara, succeeded, and threw the Captain into a wondering trance.

Still, as time wore on, and Bunsby failed to re-appear, the captain began to entertain uncomfortable doubts of another kind. Whether Bunsby had been artfully decoyed to Brig Place, and was there detained in safe custody as hostage for his friend; in which case it would become the Captain, as a man of honor, to release him, by the sacrifice of his own