"
He kissed it and placed it in his bosom, and soon after sunk into a
peaceful slumber. The excitement had not the ill effect the surgeon
feared: it somewhat exhausted him, and he slept long; but on awakening,
was pronounced out of danger. To tell the truth, the tide had turned in
his favour overnight, and it was to convey the good news on deck the
surgeon had left him.
While Dodd was recovering, the _Agra_ was beating westward with light but
contrary winds, and a good month elapsed without any incident affecting
the Hard Cash, whose singular adventures I have to record. In this
dearth, please put up with a little characteristic trifle, which did
happen one moonlight night. Mr. Fullalove lay coiled below decks in deep
abstraction meditating a patent; and being in shadow and silent, he saw
Vespasian in the moonlight creeping on all fours like a guilty thing into
the bedroom of Colonel Kenealy, then fast asleep. A horrible suspicion
thrilled through Fullalove: a suspicion he waited grimly to verify.
The transatlantic Mixture, Fullalove, was not merely an inventor, a
philanthrope, a warrior, a preacher, a hunter, a swimmer, a fiddler, a
sharp fellow, a good fellow, a Puritan, and a Bohemian; he was also a
Theorist: and his Theory, which dub we
THE AFRICAN THEORY,
had two branches.
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