“No, boy! There is not any gold, assuredly. But, remember, Harry, how many there are here who never saw gold, never heard of it; brave fellows, too, who are not afraid to scale the straightest cliff, nor venture out on the stormiest sea.” “And for what, papa? For a curlew’s nest, or a hamper of fish; and he, yonder, tells me, that one good voyage of his barque would buy out all the islands here for ever.” “So, then, you have eaten of the apple already,” cried he, with a bitter laugh. “Well, as he has tempted, he may take you. Send him to me.” The boy almost flew in his speed back, and gulping out a word or two, pointed to his father. “Are you of the same mind, now, that you were an hour or two back? Do you wish to have that boy of mine on board your ship?” asked Luttrell. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for him down, Sir, and you shall keep the gimcracks.” “You may take him. There must be no money-dealings between us now, Sir--I will sell you nothing. Come into the house with me; a very, few minutes will be sufficient.” As they walked side by side towards the house, the American, with a quaint brevity, told all that Luttrell could have desired to know of him. He and his craft, the _Quincey Squash_, were well known at Liverpool and London, he was sole owner, and traded in everything, from “lumber” to Leghorn bonnets; he went everywhere, and ventured in everything; in fact, he liked an “assorted cargo of notions” better than a single freight. “I won’t say he’ll come back a rich man to you, Sir, in five years, but you may call me a Creole if he don’t know a bit of life. Just look here,” said he, as he opened a pocket-map and spread it over the table, “there’s ten years of my life marked out on that chart; these lines--some of ‘em pretty long ones--is my voyages.” Captain--for we must now give him his accustomed title--Captain Dodge spoke fluently, and vaingloriously, too, of all he had travelled, and all he had seen; of how he had traded for ivory on the Gold Coast, and for furs up at Hudson’s Bay; how he had panted in the tropics, and shivered at Behring’s Straits. If a little proud of his successes against Malays and Moors, it was not quite certain that he “had not done” a little mild buccaneering occasionally, when “freights were low and trade was heavy.” Not that Luttrell gathered much of what he narrated, for a strange confusion was in his brain, and as he gazed at the chart and tried to follow the lines, a dimness obscured his sight, and he had to turn away and wipe his eyes. “Wud your honour like the dinner now?” whispered Molly Ryan from the door; “the strange gentleman that was sick is dyin’ of hunger.”