'Yes; and I'll tell you what those girls' father once said to me at an evening party. He took me aside, and said: "Did you ever 'ear of that fine riddle in rhyme supposed to have been written by Lord Byron, though it's attributed to a lady? I'll tell it you," and my friend, with a grave face, began: '"'Twas whispered in 'eaven; 'twas muttered in 'ell'"-- and so he went on to the end. "Well," says he, "what is it?" "I give it up," says I. "The letter H," says he.' 'Did you ever see a funeral at sea, father?' inquired Miss Vanderholt, watching the ship ahead, that was growing larger and whiter. 'Scores, my blessing; much too many. We shipped a heavy cargo at Bombay, and amongst it was cholera. I can still hear, in that dead calm of twelve days, the recurrent, sullen plunge of the shotted corpse.' 'The worst of being buried is, that you don't know what they're saying about you,' said Captain Glew. 'That's true, whether ashore or whether at sea. As the corpse goes along in the car, it might like to know what sort of a following it had, how the people who'd been thought friends had turned out. Yet, I dare say,' he went on, 'that if a man could get up and listen a bit, and take a look round, he'd be glad to sneak back.' 'Yes; if he had to hear his will read in a room full of relations,' said Miss Violet. 'I have often thought this,' said Mr. Vanderholt: 'that a man who is a genius and famous should provide by his will for a quiet funeral; for, by doing so, he guards against the risk of neglect.' This was a touch above Glew. Mr. Vanderholt rose, and went to the rail to knock out the ashes of his pipe into the sea. Miss Violet began to read, and the captain fell to walking the deck. The ship ahead grew rapidly. It was first like the half of the crescent moon leaning and shining, then it swelled into cotton-white canvas and a green hull. But the sun ate up the wind at noon. The vessels were then two miles apart, and it was not until about three in the afternoon that they were wafted by cat's-paws within speaking distance. She was a little barque, dingy with long travel. Her copper was green. Her figure-head was a romantic imagination. It represented a nymph, with her black hair fairly concealing her shape, extending her arms in a posture of ecstasy at a large gilt star that was fixed within a foot or two of her hands. Her canvas shone like satin, and at her mizzen-peak end languidly swung the Stripes and Stars, a very large flag, looking brand-new. A number of men, some of them coloured, lay over the forecastle-rail, indolently watching the _Mowbray_. The barque had a little poop, and upon it, with one foot resting on a hen-coop and one hand grasping a backstay, stood the most extraordinary figure Mr. Vanderholt had ever beheld.