"Now!" (after all salutations and inquiries have been gone through), "let me introduce you to Major Campbell." And Tom was presented to a tall and thin personage, who sat at the cabin table, bending over a microscope. "Excuse my rising," said he, holding out a left hand, for the right was busy. "A single jar will give me ten minutes' work to do again. I am delighted to meet you: Mellot has often spoken to me of you as a man who has seen more, and faced death more carelessly, than most men." "Mellot flatters, sir. Whatsoever I have done, I have given up being careless about death; for I have some one beside myself to live for." "Married at last? has Diogenes found his Aspasia?" cried Claude. Tom did not laugh. "Since my brothers died, Claude, the old gentleman has only me to look to. You seem to be a naturalist, sir." "A dabbler," said the major, with eye and hand still busy. "I ought not to begin our acquaintance by doubting your word: but these things are no dabbler's work;" and Tom pointed to some exquisite photographs of minute corallines, evidently taken under the microscope. "They are Mellot's." "Mellot turned man of science? Impossible!" "No; only photographer. I am tired of painting nature clumsily, and then seeing a sun-picture out-do all my efforts--so I am turned photographer, and have made a vow against painting for three years and a day." "Why, the photographs only give you light and shade." "They will give you colour, too, before seven years are over--and that is more than I can do, or any one else. No; I yield to the new dynasty. The artist's occupation is gone henceforth, and the painter's studio, like 'all charms, must fly, at the mere touch of cold philosophy.' So Major Campbell prepares the charming little cockyoly birds, and I call in the sun to immortalise them." "And perfectly you are succeeding! They are quite new to me, recollect. When I left Melbourne, the art had hardly risen there above guinea portraits of bearded desperadoes, a nugget in one hand and a £50 note in the other: but this is a new, and what a forward step for science!" "You are a naturalist, then?" said Campbell, looking up with interest. "All my profession are, more or less," said Tom, carelessly; "and I have been lucky enough here to fall on untrodden ground, and have hunted up a few sea-monsters this summer." "Really? You can tell one where to search then, and where to dredge, I hope. I have set my heart on a fortnight's work here, and have been dreaming at night, like a child before a Twelfth-night party, of all sorts of impossible hydras, gorgons and chimaeras dire, fished up from your western deeps." "I have none of them; but I can give you Turbinolia Milletiana and Zoanthus Couchii. I have a party of the last gentlemen alive on shore." The major's face worked with almost childish delight. "But I shall be robbing you."