CHAPTER V.

In which Peregrine Pultuney makes a Declaration and performs other heroic Feats.

As there is scarcely a greater nuisance in the world than a pertinaciously foul wind to a person who is in a hurry to get to the end of his voyage, we strongly recommend all such persons never to venture upon a passage from Calcutta to Madras in the middle of the south-west monsoon. To individuals, however, who, like Peregrine Pultuney, are in no particular hurry to see the land again, and revel in its fogs and malaria, this sort of thing, barring the rainy weather, the squalls, the heat, and the cockroaches, is rather delectable than otherwise; and our hero, who would have been happy in the hold, if Julia Poggleton had borne him company, was not in the least tired of beating down the bay, even after three weeks of this diversion, when the good ship Leander was some where off Cape Negrais, and very nearly as far from Madras as she was when at anchor in the Hooghly river.

It was a somewhat finer evening than usual, about three weeks after the departure of the Leander from Calcutta: there was little wind, and that little as foul as it could be, and the captain had just put the ship about for the sixth time in the last fourand-twenty hours, when a passenger-group was as sembled on the quarter-deck, just between the doors of the cuddy, and under the clock, to which (the group, and not the clock) we are anxious to attract the attention of our readers.

Not being at all given to mystification, we shall say at once that this group was made up of Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Poggleton and the hero of this story. The first-mentioned individual, who was the principal person of the group, in as much as that the eyes of all the others were turned upon him, was sitting well propped up with cushions in a recedingbacked easy chair. A blue camlet cloak, with a deep cape, buttoned down the front, and a high standing-up collar, with a brazen clasp, enveloped his whole frame and concealed a considerable part of his face; though enough was still visible, thin, yellow, and draggy, beneath his black velvet cap, to tell how much the poor gentleman had suffered, how much he was still likely to suffer from that horrid Promethean disease, which compels hundreds and hundreds of luckless Anglo-Indians to carry about with them, year after year, young livereating eagles in their watch-pockets, until death sets the sufferers free. Mr. Poggleton was one of

these unhappy men, writhing under a full complement of Titanic pain, with no Titanic powers of endurance. He was wasted and worn down with sickness and suffering, and his face told the story plainly; perhaps his figure would have told it even more plainly, if the wide cloak had not hidden it entirely, with the exception of the tips of his gloved-fingers and his feet, which, encased in a pair of carpet-work slippers, rested upon a morah, or rattan footstool.

Standing up, behind the chair, was Mrs. Poggleton, not looking so smart as usual, for the bestdressed people on shore soon got very dowdy on board ship, with a Bauglepore silk gown on, and a common enough straw bonnet. She was trying to arrange more comfortably the pillows behind her husband's back, with an expression of mingled tenderness and alarm in her face, for she was anxious to do her spiriting as gently as possible, yet fearful lest she should by some accident or other, excite the too easily excited choler of her irritable lord and master. In Mr. Poggleton's present state of body and mind, it was almost as easy to avoid doing this, as it would be to dance on a slack wire, attached at either end to the trigger of a loaded pistol at full cock, without an explosion being the result of the experiment. Poor Mrs. Poggleton! she was very wary and very gentle, but there was an explosion every hour of the day.

Close to her father, on a high morah, with a book

resting on her lap, sat Julia Poggleton, looking up into the invalid's face with an inquiring gaze of anxious tenderness; and upon the deck, at Julia's feet, half lying, half sitting, was Peregrine Pultuney, now somewhat recovered from his sickness, stouter and fresher than when he left Calcutta, but still both pale and attenuated, or, to express it in one word, interesting. Glancing from Julia to her father, from Mr. Poggleton to Julia, the expression of his countenance varied from admiration to pity, from pity back again to admiration, and as he every now and then stretched out his hand to pull the ears of Mrs. Poggleton's spaniel, which was frisking about, by far the happiest creature of the party, he gave unwilling evidence to the conflicting feelings which were agitating his full breast, and which he now attempted to disguise, by the old and shallow subterfuge of playing with the little dog.

"Well, well! that will do," whined the sick man. "I think, you've fussed and fumbled enough with those confounded pillows already-let them alone, do-I hate all this bother-you know I do-there, there."

"Dear me!" returned Mrs. Poggleton, meekly. to this very ungracious complaint-the explosion she so much dreaded; "who'd have thought it would make you angry-you know, I was trying to please you, my dear. I thought the pillows did not look comfortable. Well, well, only to think! Can I do any thing you would like, my love?"

"Yes-hold your tongue."

Mrs. Poggleton would have sooner done any thing else, but she submitted patiently, turned aside her head, said nothing, and looked into Julia's face. The tears had started to the poor girl's eyes.

"Shall I read to you, papa?" asked Julia, in a tremulous voice, opening the book in her lap as she spoke.

"No, Julia; I don't want you to read to me," was the answer; you choose such maudlin, melancholy books always-enough to send a sick man to

his

if grave; you want to read you may read to yourself."

"Dear papa," remonstrated Julia, mildly, "you know that when I chose humorous stories-those new books of Marryat's and Hook's, you scolded-I mean you said that they were ridiculous and farcical, What and told me not to read them any more. kind of book shall I read, dear papa?"

"No kind of book-I don't want you to read to me," whined the liver-complaint. "I tell you that you may read to yourself."

The expression of pity passed away from Peregrine's face, and he looked very much as though he would like to bundle the sick civilian, pillows and over the gangway.

all,

There was a pause of a few minutes; nobody liked to speak; Peregrine shifted his position a little, and squeezed Julia's hand; she looked at him fondly, and returned the pressure, and just as he had done so, Mr. Poggleton with that admirable consistency,