In the mean time, anxious faces began to appear on the quarter-deck, and Mr. Dodge was soon seen moving stealthily about among the passengers, whispering here, cornering there, and seemingly much occupied in canvassing opinions on the subject of the propriety of the step that the master had just taken; though, if the truth must be told, he rather stimulated opposition than found others prepared to meet his wishes. When he thought, however, he had collected a sufficient number of suffrages to venture on an experiment, that nothing but an inherent aversion to shipwreck and a watery grave could embolden him to make, he politely invited the captain to a private conference in the state-room occupied by himself and Sir George Templemore. Changing the _venue_, as the lawyers term it, to his own little apartment,--no master of a packet willingly consenting to transact business in any other place--Captain Truck, who was out of cigars at the moment, very willingly assented. When the two were seated, and the door of the room was closed, Mr. Dodge carefully snuffed the candle, looked about him to make sure there was no eave's-dropper in a room eight feet by seven, and then commenced his subject, with what he conceived to be a commendable delicacy and discretion. "Captain Truck," he said, in the sort of low confidential tone that denotes equally concern and mystery, "I think by this time you must have set me down as one of your warm and true friends and supporters. I came out in your ship, and, please God we escape the perils of the sea, it is my hope and intention to return home in her." "If not, friend Dodge," returned the master, observing that the other paused to note the effect of his peroration, and using a familiarity in his address that the acquaintance of the former passage had taught him was not misapplied; "if not, friend Dodge, you have made a capital mistake in getting on board of her, as it is by no means probable an occasion will offer to get out of her, until we fall in with a news-boat, or a pilot-boat, at least somewhere in the latitude and longitude of Sandy Hook. You smoke, I believe sir?" "I ask no better," returned Steadfast, declining the offer; "I have told every one on the Continent,"--Mr. Dodge had been to Paris, Geneva, along the Rhine, and through Belgium and Holland, and in his eyes, this was the Continent,--"that no better ship or captain sails the ocean; and you know captain, I have a way with me, when I please, that causes what I say to be remembered. Why, my dear sir, I had an article extolling the whole line in the most appropriate terms, and this ship in particular, put into the journal at Rotterdam. It was so well done, that not a soul suspected it came from a personal friend of yours."