"We are crossing the great Gulf Stream," said the captain--"Jacobs! open one of the stern-ports." "'Tis the very place and time, this is," remarked a good-humoured cotton-grower from the Deccan, "for one of the colonel's tiger-hunts, now!" "Sir!" answered the old officer, rather testily, "I am not accustomed to thrust my _tiger-hunts_, as you choose to call my humble experiences, under people's noses!" "Certainly not, my dear sir," said the planter--"but what do you say, ladies, to one of the captain's sea-yarns, then? Nothing better, I'm sure, here now, sir--eh?" Captain Collins smiled, and said he had never spun a yarn in his life, except when a boy, out of matter-of-fact old junk and tar. "Here is my steward, however," continued he, "who is the best hand at it I know, and I daresay he'll give you one." "Charming!" exclaimed the young ladies; and "What was that adventure, Mr Jacobs," said Miss Alicia, "with a beauty and a nabob in it, that you alluded to a short time ago?" "I didn't to say disactly include upon it, your ladyship," replied old Jacobs, with a tug of his hair, and a bow not just _à la maître_; "but the captain can give you it better nor I can, seeing as his honour were the Nero on it, as one may say." "Oh!" said the surgeon, rubbing his hands, "a lady and a rupee-eater in the case!" "There seems something curious about this said adventure of yours, my dear captain," said Mrs St Clair, archly, "and a beauty too! It makes me positively inquisitive, but I hope your own fair lady has heard the story?" "Why, not exactly, ma'am," replied Captain Collins, laughing as he caught the doctor looking preternaturally solemn, after a sly lee-wink to the colonel, who, having his back to the moonlight, stretched out his legs and indulged in a grim, silent chuckle, until his royal-tiger countenance was unhappily brought so far _flush_[2] in the rays as to betray a singular daguerreotype, resembling one of those cut-paper phantasmagoria thrown on a drawing-room wall, unmistakably black and white, and in the character of Malicious Watchfulness. The rubicund, fidgety little cotton-grower twiddled his thumbs, and looked modestly down on the deck, with half-shut eyes, as if expecting some bold revelation of nautical depravity; while the romantic Miss Alicia coloured and was silent. "However," said the captain, coolly, "it is no matrimonial secret, at any rate! We both talk of it sometimes when we read the Church Service of a Sunday night at home, with Jacobs for the clerk." "Do, Mr Jacobs, oblige us!" requested the younger of the girls. "Well, miss," said he, smoothing down his hair in the doorway, and hemming, "'tain't neither for the likes o' me to refuse a lady, nor accordin' to rules for to give such a yarn in presence of a supperior officer, much less the captain; with a midship helm, ye know, marm, ye carn't haul upon one tack nor the other. Not to say but next forenoon watch----" "I see, Jacobs, my man," interrupted Captain Collins,