‘Limerick,’ I answered. ‘Ow you shpell?’ He got the word, and then said, ‘Vere you boun’?’ ‘To the Solomon Group,’ I answered. This I had to spell for him too. He wrote with such imperturbability, with such a ponderosity of phlegmatic manner in his posture, with such whale-like asthmatic wheezings broken only by the trembling notes of his deep, deep voice, that again and again I was nearly exploding with laughter, and indeed, had I caught anybody’s eye but his, I must certainly have whipped out with the merriment that was almost suffocating me. He slowly returned the note-book to his pocket and exclaimed, ‘Goot. You hear more of dis,’ and with that walked to the gangway. ‘Pray forgive me,’ said I, following him and speaking very courteously, ‘will you kindly tell me the name of your ship?’ He regarded me with a kind of scowl as he hung an instant in the gangway--the only expression approaching intelligence that entered his face, and said, ‘Malvina.’ ‘And pray where are you bound to, sir?’ ‘Curaçoa.’ ‘Are you the owner, sir?’ ‘Captain,’ he responded with an emphatic nod, and so saying he put his foot on the ladder and entered his boat. Five minutes later we were breaking the seas afresh, making a more southerly course than was needful by two points, that we might give as wide a berth as soon as possible to the Dutch schooner, that, at the time I went below to the summons of the dinner-bell, was sliding away west-south-west a league distant under every cloth that she had to hoist. CHAPTER XIX. A MYSTERIOUS VOICE. This was an incident to give one a deal to think and talk about. Certainly little imaginable could be stranger than that we, being in chase of a fore-and-aft schooner yacht, should fall in with a vessel so resembling the object of our pursuit as to deceive the sight of men who professed to know the ‘Shark’ well. I should have been glad to ask the Dutchman about his craft, yet it was a matter of no moment whatever. The thing had happened, it was passing strange, and there was an end. Likely enough she was an English vessel purchased for some opulent trader in the island of Curaçoa, and on her way to that possession in charge of the porpoise who had honoured us with a visit. The incident signified only as a disappointment. All dinner time I had been fretting over it, for since sunrise I had been thinking of the vessel ahead as the ‘Shark’; counted, in a sort of unreasoning, mechanical, silent way, upon capturing Lady Monson out of her, which, of course, would mean a shift of helm for us, and home again.