Little wonder that my heart at this time felt light, that my spirits sometimes danced. Let me but bring the brig to a safe anchorage off Deal, and I might hope--failing frigates and presses--that my business was done. I should have taken a long farewell of the sea. I should be a rich man; for to me in those days, _six thousand pounds_ of English money was a great sum--aye, beyond my utmost hopes by one cipher at least. Yes; and even had I dreamt of _six hundred pounds_, how was I to earn it? Never could I have saved so much money out of the slender wage of the ocean. Why, let me even knock off another cipher, and put the figure at _sixty pounds_. Do many Jacks, after years of bitter toil, limp ashore--curved in the back, one-eyed, maybe, half-fingerless, rotted to their marrow with the beastly food, the stinking water of the jolly life of the deep, rotted to the soul by nameless sins and the slum-and-alley seductions of a hundred ports--are there many Jacks, I ask, whose savings, after years of labor, amount to _sixty pounds_? There is an irony of circumstance at sea as there is ashore; but at sea this sort of irony is bitterer than ashore, because nothing can happen at sea that lacks a coloring, more or less defined, of the fearful significance of life or death. In proof whereof list, ye landsmen, to what I am about to relate. You will suppose that so shrewd, intelligent, and diligent a lady as the Señorita Aurora would not need to be thrown much in the company of an Englishman, would not need to be long instructed by him, would not need to spend many hours in studying for herself, before she acquired a very respectable knowledge of the English tongue. And let me tell you that, by this time, though she spoke slowly, with many pauses, though she wanted many words, she was already become a very good listener when I discoursed in my own speech. How long should it take an intelligent Spanish lady to learn English--to talk it freely and correctly? I don’t know. My lady Aurora began (in questions) the study of the language, as you may remember, in the beginning of January; and now, in these early days of March, she understood me when I talked to her; when I talked to her slowly and pronounced my words carefully, and when I helped her with a sign or a Spanish word here and there. I’ll call the date the 12th of March: it was a Friday; I sat at dinner with Madam Aurora. Dinner!--yet I must give even that pleasant name to the midday repast, to the piece of beef in whose mahogany texture lurked scurvy enough to lay low a watch, to the boiled duff and the several messes of the caboose. But then our stock of poultry was growing small; we had need to be frugal; we were in the unhappy condition of not daring, or not choosing if you will, to look into a port for the replenishment of coops and casks.