“And I am John Hamilton Luttrell of Arran. Now that we know each other, are there any matters we can treat of, or is this meeting to have merely the character of a pleasant ‘rencontre?’” “It was business brought me here, Mr. Luttrell!” said M’Kinlay, with a groan of such intense sincerity that Luttrell almost smiled at it. “Whenever you feel equal to treat of it, you’ll find me at your service,” said Luttrell. “Could it be now, Mr. Luttrell--could it be now?” cried M’Kinlay, with eagerness. “It shall be this minute, if you desire it.” Unwrapping the blanket from around him, and disposing it not very gracefully, perhaps, over his shoulders, Mr. M’Kinlay scrambled rather than walked after Luttrell to his room. “Ah, Sir!” cried he, as he entered, “if I had but the shadow of a suspicion of what the expedition was before me, I’d have refused flatly; ay, Sir, if I had to throw up the agency for it the day after.” “I am truly sorry, Sir, your impressions of this place should be so unfavourable.” Mr. M’Kinlay was too full of his disastrous experiences to listen to excuses, and he went on: “People cross the Atlantic every week and don’t suffer one-half what I did since I left Westport. I vow I think they might round the Cape with less actual danger; and when we tacked about and ran down to take up the creatures that were upset, one of our sailors--no, indeed, but two of them--declared that it was at the imminent risk of our own lives we were doing it; that if something held on, or didn’t hold on, I forget which, and that if we were to get entangled in the wreck--but I can’t describe it, only I remember that the American--the greatest savage I ever met in my life--took a pistol out of his pocket, and swore he’d shoot the man at the helm if he didn’t bear up for the wreck. He swore--I’ll never forget his awful oaths, doubly terrible at such a moment--that he saw a boy, or, as he called it, ‘a buoy,’ on a spar waving his cap to us, and he said, ‘I’ll go down to him if we upset beside him.’ Yes, Sir, it sounds incredible that a man so dead to any sentiment of humanity could exist, and who could declare that he’d imperil five lives, and his own too, just out of--what shall I call it?--a whim, a caprice, a fancy, and for what?--for some fishermen, some starving creatures whose miserable lives ought to make death a release, and a boy that possibly, until your kind cook gave him leave to sit at the kitchen fire, had no home to go to to dry himself.” Luttrell’s face grew almost purple, and then, of a sudden, ashy pale. To suppress the passionate impulse that worked within him, made him feel sick almost to fainting, but he did suppress it, and with an immense effort of self-control said, “And the American, you say, was resolved that he’d save the boy.”