"Plague on my tongue! what have I done?" said the Captain, looking aghast. Then, after musing a little time, he turned his dark eye on me and growled out, "I suspect, young sir, you have been laying a trap for me; and I have fallen into it, like an old fool as I am."
"Oh, sir, if you prefer the bar!—"
"Rogue!"
"Or, indeed, I might perhaps get a clerkship in a merchant's office?"
"If you do, I will scratch you out of the pedigree!"
"Huzza then for Australasia!"
"Well, well, well," said my uncle,
"With a smile on his lip and a tear in his eye;"
"the old sea-king's blood will force its way—a soldier or a rover, there is no other choice for you. We shall mourn and miss you; but who can chain the young eagles to the eyrie?"
I had a harder task with my father, who at first seemed to listen to me as if I had been talking of an excursion to the moon. But I threw in a dexterous dose of the old Greek Cleruchiæ—cited by Trevanion—which set him off full trot on his hobby, till, after a short excursion to Eubœa and the Chersonese, he was fairly lost amidst the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor. I then gradually and artfully decoyed him into his favourite science of Ethnology; and while he was speculating on the origin of the American savages, and considering the rival claims of Cimmerians, Israelites, and Scandinavians, I said quietly,—"And you, sir, who think that all human improvement depends on the mixture of races—you, whose whole theory is an absolute sermon upon emigration, and the transplanting and interpolity of our species—you, sir, should be the last man to chain your son, your elder son, to the soil, while your younger is the very missionary of rovers."