"And to have Ethel left in the power, or rather, subjected to the wiles and addresses of one so cruel, so artful." "Tut, tut, if she would slip from her moorings by the old man's side, to sail in company with a rascally pirate, she's not worth much, friend Morley, and certainly not worth regretting." "Ethel shall judge what I have suffered, by what she is suffering herself." "Try some of that brandy-and-water, and don't get into the doldrums. Light a cheroot--there's a box of capital ones on the locker behind you. Have patience; in a few months at farthest----" "Months! You talk to me of patience, Tom, as if you had never seen me practise it." "In what way?" "Have you forgotten when I was broiling, for a pittance, on the Bonny river? how I toiled, worked, aye, slaved, and cheered myself with the thoughts of Ethel Basset, and an English home? For three years I had patience, amid adversity and illness. Heaven knows how I got through those three years, Tom." "Just as you shall get over the three months that must pass before you reach the Mauritius after visiting Rio." "Well, I returned, as I have told you, to find that her future home was to be elsewhere than in England; that we were to be separated, perhaps, hopelessly; that I had a rival, too, a kinsman, a _protégé_ of her father's, a son of a certain Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn--a fellow without honour, honesty, money, or scruple." "I'd like to give him a dip at the end of a deep-sea line." "Sail, homeward-bound, on the weather-bow!" reported Morrison, one morning, a few days after this. Morley's heart leaped, and he rushed on deck to look at the stranger--a smart bark, close-hauled, with all her starboard-tacks aboard. She was evidently a foreigner, being painted a pale pea-green. "A Baltic craft, I take her to be," said Morrison. "Here she comes, running sharp on a wind, with a bone in her teeth." "A bone?" repeated Morley. "Yes; the spray flying under her cutwater, and over her catheads. Don't you remember the fun we used to have with De Vavasour Spout, the cockney supercargo, when talking all manner of nautical rubbish to him. Morrison, run up our ensign; lay the mainyard to the mast; steward, hand up the trumpet, we'll overhaul her." The orders were promptly obeyed; the stranger also backed his mainyard, and showed his ensign--black and white. "Prussian," said Morrison. "Bound for the Elbe," added Bartelot, whose hail was answered in a hoarse dissonance, that made even Noah Gawthrop's grim visage relax with a smile, as he sent the debris of his quid to leeward, and anathematised foreigners in general, and their Hugos in particular, while each vessel stood off on her course again. "No chance for you, Morley," said Bartelot, "so we'll give it up and think no more about it." Ten days elapsed after this, and, in all that space never once did the _Princess_ come within hail of a homeward-bound ship, so Morley strove to resign himself to his fate.