'Strange, wasn't it, Violet, my dear,' continued he to his daughter, 'that my friend the Councillor's nephew should have gone out in the same Indiaman, so fortunately--though, of course, after all, it _was_ the first this season.' 'Ah!' said she, starting, 'I beg pardon, papa--what did you--weren't you talking of the river?' 'Don't you hear, child,' said the judge, 'I said it was a curious coincidence, Mr Westwood's going in this vessel.' 'Oh yes, indeed!' answered she, and couldn't help looking down a little confounded. But the lady's-maid was putting on her tiny slipper, which had come off, while her father mentioned that of course I'd had practical reasons for not owning my profession hitherto; meaning, I suppose, that I didn't speak for fear of having to work, like the monkeys--though the sharp old lawyer must have had a better guess by this time, and queer enough it must have been to see her face, listening to him as he explained it all. I stood biting my lips, meanwhile--two or three times on the point of telling him it was all nonsense about my being a nephew of any hanged old nabob whatever; when Sir Charles said carelessly he should leave the _Seringapatam_, if possible, at the Cape of Good Hope, as he couldn't trust safely to the present officers. "Just then up got the merry chant of the men running round with the capstan-bars, to get up anchor; the chief officer wishing, as it was found, to carry her farther into the river with the breeze--for the sake of filling our water-casks the easier, according to him, but more likely out of sheer spite at what had been done without him. What with eagerness in the cuddy to get on shore and see the woods, the breakfast below was a rare scene, no one minding what he did, even to rushing slap into a couple of ladies' berths for his boots, or laying a couple of loaded Joe Mantons into somebody's bed, swallowing biscuit and butter on the way. "Suddenly, we heard the splash of paddles in the water, with a hail in some foreign tongue or other, and hurried on deck in a body; where we found the ship tiding it slowly up, under jibs and fore-topsail, and beginning to open a longer reach where the river seemed to narrow in. A black-eyed, black-bearded fellow, with a tallow, yellow, sweaty sort of complexion, in a dirty jacket, drawers, and short boots, and an immense grass hat, shouting Portuguese louder and louder into the first mate's ear, till he actually put both hands together, and roared through them, pointing to himself now and then, as if surprised he wasn't known.