“Deed, ay! He’s a credit to ye, but he wouldn’t have the earache if ye hadn’t dowered him wi’a thick cranium.” And the doctor hurried away, sore because his grains of science had fallen on such unreceptive soil. Karl, of course, recovered speedily, and the more he learnt to appreciate a Manipur pony, a brace of sporting fox-terriers, and an air-gun, the less prone was he to uncanny manifestations. As the sway of Mathilde declined, the more did he unconsciously acquire the lore of the jungle, until, at ten years of age, he had the wisdom and beauty of a young god, though he could scarce write his name, and spelled as a Scotchman jokes. So a family council sat many times, and there came a day when Mrs. Grier and Karl leaned against the rail of the P. & O. steamer, _Ganges_, and watched the form of the stalwart planter until he, and the Calcutta Ghaut, and the busy banks of the Hughli River, dissolved in a mist of tears. For India is an evil land in which to rear tender plants of European stock, and Karl must go home, not to see the glowing east again until he was a man. His mother went with him, and, if God favored the loving family, they would all be reunited when Grier sold his tea-garden in its highest state of efficiency some three years later. These partings yield the sternest test of an imperial race. Hearts which do not break suffer the fiercer strain. Karl, who had forgotten the sea, being scarce able to toddle when his parents quitted Britain, quickly merged his sorrows in the marvels of the Bay of Bengal. His mother, choking her grief each day until the boy slept, watched him narrowly. She was a very intelligent woman, and, although her formula was wordless, she had a definite belief that the immensity of the ocean, its far-flung silence, might affect her extraordinary son in some unexpected manner. Luckily, Dr. Macpherson, time-expired and pensioned, was on board, and in him she had a sympathetic friend also who was a skilled observer. He concurred with her that repression or secrecy was not to be thought of in connection with Karl. The boy’s insatiable curiosity about ships and their ways was not denied such information as was obtainable. The captain, attracted one morning by his joyous laugh, took him up to the chart-house, showed him how to take an observation, explained the curvature of the earth, and, finally, made him pull the cord of the siren, thereby summoning all hands to collision quarters for inspection. Now, the raucous blast of the fog-horn spoke to the youngster as the voice of the ship. It probed boundless depths in Karl’s soul. He heard the tremulous waves of sound speeding over the face of the waters long after the steam breath was dry in the whistle. He heard, though he knew it not, the solemn echoes as the rolling harmony was sent up from sea to clouds and back to the sea again.