"I don't; I'm afraid I shouldn't like you half so well if you were."
"But if I were I should be a sailor, and would study till I became a commodore," replied the young lady, blushing.
"You overrate the office."
"Nothing could be more delightful than to live in the cabin, and go from place to place in this beautiful ship."
"If you were on board in a gale of wind, perhaps you would not think her so very beautiful."
"Well, I think so now."
The conversation was interrupted by the call for all hands to go on shore. The boats were lowered, and the ship's guests were invited to take passage in the commodore's barge. De Forrest pulled the stroke oar in this boat, and his disgust was intolerable. The fair Miss Gurney sat directly in front of him, chatting with the commodore. He had flattered himself that this young lady had some regard for him, and he had accompanied her party from city to city, solely for the sake of being with her—she was so fascinating. He had permitted her to lead him to the shores of the Baltic, where he had been captured by the principal. And this was the reward of all his devotion! Thus she gave him the cold shoulder, and bestowed her smiles upon the commodore! It was real agony to him, and the coxswain was obliged to call out to him more than once to mind his stroke.
The company landed, except De Forrest and Beckwith, whose liberty had been stopped, and they were handed over to the care of Peaks, the boatswain, who put them both into the fourth cutter, and pulled back to the ship, leaving the other forward officers in charge of the rest of the boats. The party took the train at Neufahrwasser, and in a quarter of an hour were in Danzig.
"Large vessels used to go up to the city," said Dr. Winstock, who was in the compartment with Lincoln and the Kinnairds; "but on the breaking away of the ice in the Vistula in 1840, a new passage to the sea was opened, and the water was diverted from the deep channel."
"Danzig is a great grain city—isn't it?" asked Lincoln.