“It might be a question, my dear, between us, which had the least success,—I, who never got a husband, or you, who married that one.”
If Mr. Kennyfeck had intended by a tableau to have pointed the moral of this allusion, he could not have succeeded better, as he sat bolt upright in his chair, endeavoring through the murky cloud of his crude ideas to catch one ray of light upon all he witnessed; he looked the very ideal of hopeless stupidity. Miss O'Hara, like a skilful general, left the field under the smoke of her last fire, and Mrs. Kennyfeck sat alone, with what Homer would call “a heart-consuming rage,” to meditate on the past.
CHAPTER XXVII. LIEUTENANT SICKLETON'S PATENT PUMP.
The mariner's chart
He knew by heart,
And every current, rock, and shore,
From the drifting sand
Off Newfoundland,
To the son-split cliffs of Singapore.
Captain Pike.
Lord Charles Frobisher was never a very talkative companion, and as Cashel's present mood was not communicative, they drove along, scarcely interchanging a sentence, till the harbor of Kingstown came in sight, and with it the gay pennons that fluttered from the mast of Roland's schooner.
“I suppose that is your yacht,—the large craft yonder?”
“I hope so,” said Cashel, enthusiastically; “she sits the water like a duck, and has a fine rakish look about her.”
“So, then, you never saw her before?”
“Never. I purchased her from description, taking her crew, commander, and all, just as she sailed into Southampton from Zante, a month ago. They sent me a drawing of her, her measurement, tonnage, and draught of water, as also the log of her run in the Mediterranean;—yes, that's she, I can recognize the water-line from the sketch.”