In the Eastern Seas

by William Henry Giles Kingston

I must make a long story short. We found that Captain and Mrs Davenport, after waiting at Singapore for some months, vainly expecting our return, and after having made every inquiry in their power for the missing Dugong, had at length given up the search, under the belief that we had been lost in a typhoon. A ship had touched at Singapore whose captain had died, and Captain Davenport having lost so much of his property in the Bussorah Merchant, had been compelled to accept the charge of taking her home. He had there been immediately appointed to the command of a new ship—the Ulysses. The offer he gladly accepted, as she was, after touching at Singapore, to proceed round the south coast of Borneo, and thus up through the Sea of Celebes to the Philippine Islands and Japan. He had faint hopes of finding us, but yet the opportunity was not to be lost.

Our meeting was indeed wonderful, and we had reason to be thankful that we had been saved the sufferings to which we might have been subjected, and that their anxiety was thus happily ended. I need scarcely say that Mrs Davenport and her husband suffered greatly at the supposed loss of their daughter, while I fully believe they mourned also greatly for us; indeed, they treated both Emily and I as if we were their own children, and nothing could exceed their kindness and attention. Captain Davenport offered to return to Singapore for the sake of landing Mr Hooker and our uncle; but they preferred remaining on board the ship, declaring that they must set to work to replace the treasures they had lost; and as the ship was to remain for several days at every place she touched at, they hoped in a limited degree to do so; but I could not help being amused sometimes at hearing them mourning the loss of their specimens—not, however, so much on their own account as on that of the scientific world in general.

“But surely, uncle,” I said one day, “you have saved your note-books, and from them you may give a good deal of information.”

“Of course, Walter,” he answered. “That is my great consolation. Had it not been for that, I scarcely think I could have survived the terrible disaster.”

We had reason to be thankful that we had fallen in with the Ulysses, for we had not been on board a couple of days when it came on to blow hard, and so heavy a sea got up, that I suspect our raft would scarcely have held together, or at all events we should probably have been washed off it. I must reserve the notes we made at the fresh places we visited for another occasion.

At length we were once more on our homeward voyage. The first mate of the ship having got appointed to the command of a vessel which had lost her master, Mr Thudicumb took his place. The boatswain also was taken ill, and Dick Tarbox became boatswain in his stead; while the other men entered as seamen on board the Ulysses.

We arrived in England after a prosperous voyage. I told Captain Davenport that I hoped he would allow me to accompany him again to sea, trusting that I might soon obtain a berth as mate on board his ship.

“I should be very glad to have you, Walter,” he said; “but I have received some information which will make it your duty, I suspect, to remain on shore. When I was last in England, I saw an account in the newspapers of the death of the surviving children of your father’s elder brother, and now he himself has followed them to the grave. As far, therefore, as I can learn, you are heir-at-law to the title and estates of Lord Heatherly.”

I almost lost my breath as I listened to this information. I could scarcely indeed believe it.

“I think you must be mistaken, my dear sir,” I answered. “I never even heard my father say that he was likely to succeed to the title.”