It was an exhilarating start, and all faces were bright--but one. The
captain looked somewhat grave and thoughtful, and often scanned the
horizon with his glass; he gave polite but very short answers to his
friend Colonel Kenealy, who was firing nothings in his ear, and sent for
the gunner.
While that personage, a crusty old Niler called Monk, is cleaning himself
to go on the quarter-deck, peep we into captain Dodd's troubled mind, and
into the circumstances which connect him with the heart of this story,
despite the twelve thousand miles of water between him and the lovers at
Barkington.
It had always been his pride to lay by money for his wife and children,
and, under advice of an Indian friend, he had, during the last few years,
placed considerable sums, at intervals, in a great Calcutta house, which
gave eight per cent for deposits: swelled by fresh capital and such high
interest, the hoard grew fast. When his old ship, sore battered off the
Cape, was condemned by the company's agents at Canton, he sailed to
Calcutta, intending to return thence to England as a passenger.
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