“I had been walking the deck for some time, thinking now of one thing, now of another, when a boat with two persons in the sternsheets came alongside, and answered to the quarter-master’s hail—
“‘Her Majesty’s British Consul of Angostura and his family.’
“The accommodation-ladder had already been rigged in preparation for the arrival of these important personages. The sides being manned, the next instant a stout gentleman who must be, I knew, the consul, began to ascend, shoving up before him a veiled female figure. She, I rightly guessed, was his wife. I advanced to meet them, and was about to address the lady, when her husband informed me that ‘She no speak English—and, as she is very tired, she wishes at once to go to her cabin.’
“I accordingly conducted the veiled lady below. From her figure, and a glimpse I caught of her countenance as the light from the lamp fell on it (as by chance, of course, her veil fell on one side), I saw that she was young and undoubtedly pretty, thus accounting for the jealousy displayed by her ‘lord and master.’
“The old gentleman followed and remained for a short time in the cabin. When he came out I observed that he examined the door, and seemed rather nonplussed on discovering that there was no key with which he could follow his usual custom of locking up his better half. I invited him to walk the deck with me, that he might give me a fuller account of the circumstances which had occurred at Angostura, requiring the visit of a British man-of-war.
“He told me a long rigmarole tale of an attack which had been made on his house by a party of brigands, as he called them, from Venezuela, the chief object of which, as he suspected, was to carry off his wife; however, they, or some one else, had pulled down the consular flagstaff. A half-caste, who claimed to be a British subject, belonging to Trinidad, had been killed, and two or three others had been made prisoners. All the time he was speaking he was in a state of agitation, and soon hurried back into the cabin, to ascertain (as he said), whether his wife wanted anything.
“He supped with us in the gunroom, and though he played a very good knife and fork, he exhibited the same uneasiness, jumping up two or three times during the meal, to pay his spouse a visit.
“McTavish, who had not suspected the cause of his anxiety, remarked, ‘that he had never seen more devoted affection displayed, and that he could not help admiring the old gentleman,’ though he owned that he possessed very few other likeable qualities.
“For my own part, I did not anticipate much pleasure in the society of my guests.
“By break of day we got under weigh and stood for the ‘Boca de Huevos,’ or the Umbrella Passage. Till I consulted our sailing directions I had fancied that we might have made a short cut to the southward through one of the Serpent’s Mouths, but the hot current which sets into the Gulf of Paria, caused by the immense mass of water flowing out of the Orinoco, would have effectually prevented us from gaining our object. The longest way round, therefore, was the shortest to our destination.