Now the captain of the _Vulture_ was Billy's cousin by marriage. Reginald
Bazalgette. Twenty years ago, when the captain was a boy, they were great
friends: of late Bazalgette had seen less of him; still it seems strange
he did not recognise him in his own ship. But one or two causes
co-operated to prevent that. In the first place, the mind when turned in
one direction is not so sharp in another; and Captain Bazalgette had been
told to look for David in a merchant ship bound for the East Indies. In
the next place, insanity alters the expression of the face wonderfully,
and the captain of a frigate runs his eye over four hundred sailors at
muster, or a hundred at work, not to examine their features, but their
dress and bearing at the one, and their handiness at the other. The worst
piece of luck was that Mrs. Dodd did not know David called himself
William Thompson. So there stood "William Thompson" large as life on the
ship's books, and nobody the wiser. Captain Bazalgette had a warm regard
and affection for Mrs. Dodd, and did all he could. Indeed, he took great
liberties: he stopped and overhauled several merchant ships for the
truant; and, by-the-by, on one occasion William Thompson was one of the
boat's crew that rowed a midshipman from the _Vulture_ alongside a
merchant ship to search for David Dodd.
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