It was a great day, when all things being in readiness, the Salvage Company’s steamer Sherbro, and the dockyard tug Camel, made their appearance on the scene, and set to work on the hitherto disabled vessel. What a shout from the sailors when taken in hand by the tugs, the Alphita quietly glided into deep water, and was towed along a distance of ten or twelve miles to Portsmouth. We say this was a triumph of art. It is what could not have been done half a century ago. On reaching Portsmouth, the vessel underwent a regular inspection, and was found to have sustained very material damages, which, however, were not irreparable, and are in the course of being repaired. We conclude the accounts given of this remarkable exploit, by stating that Captain Coppin intends to commence operations on the Vanguard, one of Her Majesty’s ironclads, accidentally sunk on the southern coast of Ireland. He has already, it is said, managed to introduce a couple of hawsers under the hull; and with some interest we shall await the result. To lift an ironclad war-vessel from the bottom of the sea, and float her to the nearest port, would surely be the perfection of maritime engineering. Possibly it may be done. We are no longer astonished at anything.
W. C.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CHAPTER XXI.—ETHEL FINDS A FRIEND.
‘It was all one property once,’ said Lady Maud, as she sat by Ethel’s side in the open window of the school-room, while Ethel’s pupil, Lady Alice, was busily engaged in copying a sketch. The window commanded across the park a view of Carbery, with its Elizabethan gables and vanes glinting back the sun. Lady Maud was fond of spending her spare hours in the society of the new governess, and she and Ethel were, in spite of the difference of their position, fast friends.
‘It is seldom,’ said Ethel Gray, ‘that two such grand houses are so close together.’
‘They belonged, as I said, to one owner,’ returned Lady Maud; ‘and the builder of Carbery was a De Vere and lived at High Tor, long ago. He was an ancestor of ours; but I don’t know exactly how it was that the properties came to be divided. I do know how Sir Sykes came to be master of the Chase; and if you like, I will tell you the story. It is no secret. I wonder that none of the village gossips have been beforehand with me.’
‘I always imagined Sir Sykes to be a relation of yours,’ said Ethel, with another glance at the stately mansion, gleaming in the mellow sunshine.
‘No more than you are, dear,’ answered Lady Maud; ‘and indeed he never could have expected to be the owner of that fine place, when he was a boy. He was poor enough. His father, old Sir Harbottle, had been a sad spendthrift, and died abroad; and when Sir Sykes, then a captain of infantry, came back from India, he had nothing to inherit but the baronetcy. They are Yorkshire people, the Denzils, not Devonshire; but there was a connection by marriage between Sir Sykes and old Lord Harrogate, who had married Sir Harbottle’s sister.