Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 417, July, 1850
Louis Philippe, bent on the immediate possession of the throne, made another attempt to gain M. de Chateaubriand; and for this purpose the Duchess of Orleans and Madame Adelaide again sent for him.
"Madame Adelaide was present as on the former occasion; and the duchess now described more specifically the favours with which the Duke of Orleans proposed to honour me. She dwelt on what she called my sway over public opinion; the sacrifices I had made, and the aversion which Charles X. and his family had always shown to me in spite of my services. She said to me, that if I would accept the portfolio of foreign affairs, his Royal Highness would be too happy to replace me in that situation; but that possibly I would prefer returning to Rome, and that she would greatly rejoice at that appointment, for the interests of our holy religion.
"'Madam,' I answered with some degree of vivacity, 'I see that his Royal Highness has taken his line; that he has weighed the consequences; that he is prepared to meet the years of misery and perils he will have to traverse. I have therefore nothing to say on that head – I come not here to fail in respect to the blood of the Bourbons; I owe besides nothing but gratitude and respect to Madame. Leaving apart, then, those great objections, founded on reason and principle, I pray her Royal Highness to allow me to explain what personally concerns myself.
"'She has had the condescension to speak of what she calls my power over general opinion. Well, if that power is well founded, on what is it founded? Is it on anything else but the public esteem: and should I not lose it the moment I changed my colours? The Duke of Orleans supposes he would in me acquire a support: instead of that he would gain only a miserable maker of phrases, whose voice would no longer be listened to – a renegade, on whom every one would have a right to throw dust and to spit in his face. To the hesitating words which he could pronounce in favour of Louis Philippe, they would oppose the entire volumes he had written in favour of the fallen family. Is it not I, Madam, who have written the pamphlet of Buonaparte and the Bourbons; the articles on the arrival of Louis XVIII. at Compiègne; the relation of the Royal Council at Ghent, and the History of the Life and Death of the Duke de Berri? I know not that I have written a single page where the name of our ancient kings is not either mentioned or alluded to, and where they are not environed by the protestations of my love and fidelity – a thing which marks strength of principle the more strongly, asMadame knows that, as an individual, I put no faith in princes. At the thought even of desertion, the colour mounts to my cheeks. The day after my treachery, I should go to throw myself into the Seine. I implore Madame to forgive the vehemence of my language: I am penetrated with her goodness: I shall ever preserve a profound and grateful remembrance of it; but she would not wish me to be dishonoured. Pity me, madam, pity me.'"
"I was still standing; and bowing, I retired. Mademoiselle de Orleans, (the Princess Adelaide,) had not yet said anything. She rose up, and retiring said, 'I do not pity you, M. de Chateaubriand; I do not pity you.' I was forcibly struck with the mournful accent with which she pronounced these words." – Vol. ix. 361, 362.
"Pity not me," said the dying Chevalier Bayard to the traitor Constable de Bourbon; "pity those who fight against their king, their country, and their oath." The feelings of honour are the same in all ages.
We shall close this long line of honourable acts with an extract from Chateaubriand's noble speech in favour of Henry V., in the Chamber of Peers, on July 7, 1830.
"'Charles X. and his sons are dethroned or have abdicated; it signifies not which. The throne is not vacant– after them comes an infant; will you condemn the innocent?
"'What blood now cries out against him? Can you say it is that of his father? That orphan educated in the school of his country, in attachment to a constitutional throne, and in the ideas of his age, will become a king in harmony with the cravings of the future. It is to the guardian of his infancy that you would first tender the oath to be faithful to it. Arrived at mature years, he would himself renew it. The king at this moment, the real king for a time, would be the Duke of Orleans, the regent of the kingdom; a prince who has lived near the people, and who knows that the monarchy now can only be a monarchy of concession and reason. That combination, so natural, so obvious, appears a main element in reconciliation, and would save France from the convulsions which are the consequence of violent changes in a state.
"'To say that this infant, separated from his masters, would not have leisure to forget their precepts before becoming a man: to say that he would remain infatuated by certain dogmas of his birth, after a long popular education, after the terrible lesson which has discrowned two kings in two nights: is that reasonable?
"'It is neither from a sentimental devotion, nor the affection of a nurse for the cradle of Henry IV., that I plead a cause where all would turn against me if it triumphed. I am neither influenced by the ideas of romance nor of chivalry: I do not desire the crown of martyrdom. I do not believe in the divine right of kings: I am alive to the power of revolutions, and the evidence of facts. I do not even invoke the charter: I ascend to a higher source. I draw my principles from the philosophic ideas of the age in which my life expires: I propose the Duke of Bordeaux simply as a necessity preferable to the Duke of Orleans.
"'You proclaim the sovereignty of force. It is well. Look carefully after it: guard it well; for, if it escapes you, who will pity your lot? Such is human nature. The most enlightened minds are not always raised above the temptations of success. The esprits forts were the first to invoke the right of violence; they supported it by all the force of their talents; and at the moment when the truth of what they said is demonstrated by the abuse of that force, and its overthrow, the conquerors seize the weapon they have broken! Dangerous trophies, which may wound the hand which seized them.
"'A useless Cassandra, I have fatigued the throne and the country sufficiently with my disdained predictions: it remains for me only to seat myself on the remains of the wreck which I have so often predicted. I recognise in misfortune every power except that of absolving us from our oaths. I must render my life uniform: after all I have written, said, and done for the Bourbons, I should be the basest of the base if I deserted them when for the third time they bend their steps into exile.
"'Far from me be the thought of casting the seeds of division into France: thence it is that I have avoided in my discourse the language of the passions. If I had the firm conviction that an infant should be left in the obscure and tranquil ranks of life, to secure the repose of thirty-three millions of men, I should have regarded any opinion expressed against the declared wishes of the age as a crime. I have no such conviction. If I was entitled to dispose of the crown, I should willingly lay it at the feet of the Duke of Orleans. But I have no such right. I see no place vacant but a tomb at St Denis, and not a throne.
"'Whatever destinies may attend the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, I shall never be his enemy, if he acts for the good of his country. I only ask to be allowed to preserve the freedom of my conscience, and to go and leave my bones where I shall find independence and repose. I vote against the motion.'" – Vol. ix. 386-388.
Chateaubriand was as good as his word. He resigned all his appointments, even his pension of £600 a-year as Peer of France: he sold off all his effects, which scarcely paid his debts: he refused the offer of Charles X. to restore that pension out of the wreck of that Prince's own fortune: he set out again penniless on the pilgrimage of life: and till his death, in 1848, supported himself entirely by his literary talents.
Such was honour in the olden time. We do not say that it would not find imitators, on a similar crisis, on this side of the Channel: we believe it would find many. But this we do say, that it would find them only among those who are imbued with the ancient ideas, among whom, whether patrician or plebeian, the spirit of chivalry is not extinct. It will not be found among the worshippers of mammon, or the slaves of interest. Woe to the nation by whom such feelings are classed with the age of the mammoth and the mastodon! It has entered the gulf of destruction, for it deserves to be destroyed.
THE GREEN HAND
A "SHORT" YARN
PART XI
"Well, ma'am," continued our narrator, addressing himself, as usual, to his matronly relative in the chair, and with the accustomed catch-word, which was like the knotting together of his interrupted yarn: "well – it was between a fortnight and three weeks after losing sight of St Helena, that, being at last fairly in the latitude of the Cape, the frigate and schooner tacked in company, and stood close-hauled on a wind to the eastward. By the middle watch that night, when the moon set, we could make out the long flat top of Table Mountain heaving in sight off the horizon over against her. Next day, in fact, we were both of us quietly at anchor outside of the shipping in Table Bay; Cape Town glittering along on the green flat amongst the trees to southward, with the hills on each side of it like some big African lion lying on guard close by; while Table Mountain hove up, square-shouldered, blue to the left, four thousand feet high, as bare and steep as a wall, with the rocks and trees creeping up from the foot, and the wreaths of light cloud resting halfway, like nothing else but the very breakwater of the world's end. The sea stretched broad off to north and west, and a whole fleet of craft lay betwixt us and the land – half of them Indiamen – amongst which, you may be sure, I kept a pretty sharp look-out with the glass, to see if the Seringapatam were there still.
I was soon saved further pains on this head, however, when shortly afterwards the frigate was beset by a whole squadron of bumboats, shoving against each other, and squabbling, in all sorts of Nigger tongues, who should be first: the chief of them being in evident command of a fat old Dutch Frouw, with an immense blue umbrella over her, two greasy-looking Hottentot rowers in blankets, and a round-faced Dutch boy, the picture of herself, steering the boat; as the old lady made a clear berth for herself, by laying about with her blue umbrella, till she was close under our quarter, sitting all the while with the broad round stern of her bright-coloured gown spread over a couple of beer-barrels, like a peacock's train. In two minutes more the little fellow was up the side, flourishing a bundle of papers under the first lieutenant's very nose, and asking the ship's custom, even whilst the sentries were ordering them all off. A midshipman took this youth by the cuff of the neck, and was handing him rather roughly along to the care of the purser's steward, when I stepped betwixt them; and a bumboat being the best directory on the point, of course, I soon found the old lady had had dealings with the Seringapatam, which her bluff-built little progeny described as a very good ship indeed, all having paid their bills, except one young officer, who had left a balance standing, for which he had given a letter to his brother in a ship that was to come after. As for the Indiaman herself, the Dutch boy said she had sailed about a week before our arrival, along with two others; and he was anxious to know if we were the vessel in question. I accordingly unfolded the open letter, which was addressed, – "Thomas Spoonbill Simm, Esquire, of His Britannic Majesty's ship Nincompoop, (or otherwise;") and it ran somehow thus: – "Hon. East India Company's ship Seringapatam, Table Bay, September 1, 1816.– My dear Brother, This is to certify, that I have eaten four dozen and a half of eggs, supplied by the worthy Vrouw Dulcken, the bearer of this, whom I can recommend as an old screw, and am due her for the same the sum of nine shillings and sixpence sterling, which you will kindly pay her, taking her receipt or mark, unless you are willing to forfeit our family watch, herewith deposited by me in the hands of said Mother Dulcken. I may add that, in justice to the worthy Vrouw, three of the above-mentioned eggs ought to be charged as fowls, which, by the way, I did not consume; and, with love to all at home, remain your affectionate brother, John Simm, H. E. I. C. S. —P. S. The watch I have discovered to be pinchbeck, and it does not go; so that a sad trick must have been originally played upon our venerated Uncle, from whom it descended. J. S." This precious epistle was, without doubt, a joke of the fat mid. Simm, who used to come such rigs over Ford the cadet, and that jumped overboard one night by mistake out of the Indiaman's quarter-boat, during the voyage. As for the existence of his brother Thomas, or the chance of his touching at that port, I set them down with the coming home of Vanderdecken; though the thought of this young scamp of a sea-lawyer breakfasting for a fortnight so comfortably, only a few feet distant from my charmer's state-room, sent me all abroad again, and right into the Indiaman's decks, by this time far out of sight of land. Piece of impudent roguery though it was, I was actually loath to part with the scrawl, which the reefer had fisted, no doubt, on the lid of his chest – probably with a pipe in his mouth at the time, it smelt so of tobacco – only seven days before. I could even see the grin on his fat face as he wrote it below in the steerage, with his chin up, and his eyes looking down past his pipe; while the little Dutch boy's round flat frontispiece glistened as he peered up at me, in the evident notion of my being the brother expected. In fact, ma'am, I was so soft as to intend paying the nine-and-sixpence myself, and keeping the letter, when I was startled to see the old lady herself had contrived to be hoisted on board amongst her cabbages; and having got wind of the thing, seemingly, she came waddling towards me to hand over Simm's watch to boot. In another half minute the letter was being read aloud in the midst of the whole gun-room officers, amongst roars of laughter; the honest old Dutchwoman holding aloft the precious article, and floundering through to find out the rightful owner, as every one claimed it and offered the nine-and-sixpence; while for my part I tried first to get down one hatchway, then another, and Lord Frederick himself came up on the starboard side of the quarterdeck in the height of the scene. Indeed, I believe it was a joke for months after in the Hebe, of a night, to say it was "the second lieutenant's watch;" the sole revenge I had being to leave Mother Dulcken and her boy to expect the "ship that was coming after."
A Government boat came aboard in the afternoon, and as soon as it left us, Lord Frederick took his gig, and steered for a frigate lying some distance off, which had the harbour flag hoisted at her main, being the only man-o'-war besides ourselves, and commanded by a senior captain. Till it got dark I could see the crews of the nearest merchantmen looking over their bulwarks at us and our prize, apparently comparing the schooner with the frigate, and speculating on her character, as she lay a few fathoms off the Hebe's quarter, both of us rising and falling in turn on the long heave of the Cape swell from seaward. 'Twas hard to say, in fact, so far as their hulls went, which was the most beautiful sample of its kind; though the schooner's French-fashioned sticks and off-hand sort of rigging, showed rather like jury-gear beside the tall regular sticks aloft of the Hebe's decks, with all her hamper perfect to a tee. The Hebe's men very naturally considered their own ship a model for everything that floated, a sort of a Solomon's temple, in short; and to hear the merciless way they ran down the Indiamen all round, would have raised the whole homeward-bound fleet against us; whereas the schooner was our own, at any rate, and she was spoken of much in the manner one mentions an unfortunate orphan, as good as already christened by the name of "the Young Hebe." This our learned chaplain said was quite improper, and he gave another name in place of it – the "Aniceta" – which meant, as he observed, the Hebe's youngest daughter; so the Aniceta she was called, happening to be a title that went, according to the boatswain, full as sweetly through the sheave-hole.
Next day the schooner had landed not only her passengers from St Helena, but the prisoners also, as we still understood the French and their Kroomen to be. Not long after that Lord Frederick came back from Cape Town, looking grave, and went straight down to his cabin, or "cabins," as his lordship preferred to have it said. The first lieutenant dined that day with the captain; but they could scarcely have finished when the "young gentlemen" who had been as usual from the reefer's mess, came up with a message from the captain, that his lordship would be glad if I would join the first lieutenant and himself in a glass of wine. I found them sitting at the side of the table nearest the open port, with the decanters between them, and the broad bright bay in full sight to the shore and the foot of Table Mountain, which rose up blocking the port with the top of it beyond view; the sounds of the merchantmen clicking at their heavy windlasses, and hoisting in water-casks, floated slowly in from every side, while the schooner had hauled on her cable more abreast of the frigate, leaving the sight clear over the eddy round her low counter.
"A lovely piece of workmanship, certainly!" observed Lord Frederick thoughtfully, as he leant back swinging his eyeglass round his finger, with the other hand in the breast of his waistcoat, and looking out at what was seen of the schooner. "And how one might have improved her spars, too!" said Mr Hall, wistfully. "I should have recommended longer lower-masts altogether, Lord Frederick, and a thorough overhaul, I may say, from the combings upwards!" "I would not have her hull touched for the world, Mr Hall!" said the captain; "'tis too – excessively provoking, at least! But pass the bottles to Mr Collins, if you please." I had taken a chair and quietly filled my glass, wondering what could be the matter, when his lordship turned to me and said, "Do you know, Mr Collins, this schooner of ours is likely to be laid up in Chancery, heaven knows how long. The Admiralty court ashore are doubtful of condemning her, apparently, and she must either be sent home or to Monte Video or somewhere, where the master of her claims to belong!" "Indeed, my lord," said I, setting down my glass, "that is curious." "Curious indeed, sir!" replied he, biting his lips, "though, after all, we really can scarce say what she is to be condemned for – only in the meantime I sail to-morrow for India." "She's French to the backbone, that I'll swear, Lord Frederick!" I said; "and what's more, she was" – "Ah," broke in the captain, "I know, I know; but the less we say of that, in present circumstances, the better! Once get her entangled with politics, and we may give her up altogether." Lord Frederick twisted his eyeglass round his forefinger faster than before, still watching the schooner; the first lieutenant held up his claret betwixt himself and the light, and I sipped mine. "I tell you what, gentlemen," exclaimed his lordship suddenly, "I must have that schooner at any cost! – What is to be done, Mr Hall?" "She'd be of great service in the China seas, my lord, certainly," said the first lieutenant, looking thoughtfully into his empty glass; "a perfect treasure for light service, especially if new sparred and – " I noticed Lord Frederick glancing sideways at me, as I thought, with a slight gleam in his eye; and accordingly I suggested that he might buy her from the Frenchman himself; a very poor idea, no doubt, as both the captain and first luff seemed to think, and we all three kept eyeing her doubtfully through the port, without a word.
At this time the schooner's counter had been slowly sheering toward the frigate's beam, owing to the ebb-tide, and her holding only by a single cable, till her stern began to show right opposite the cabin, I should say not twenty feet off. Lord Frederick put his glass to his eye, and was peering through it, when he remarked that they had brought up rather too near, leaving scarce room for the schooner to swing as she did, earlier than we, so that she would be in danger of getting foul of the frigate's cables. "The worst of it is, Lord Frederick," said I, "that in case of a gale from seaward here, she might have to slip and run upon very short warning, whereas the Hebe has plenty of ground-tackle to let her ride it out. Considering it was Table Bay, at this season, he ought to have kept her a clearer berth for herself, or else have gone well outside!" – "Ah!" said Lord Frederick quickly, meeting my eye for half a minute, till the gleam came into his again; and somehow or other mine must have caught it, though I must say the notion that struck me then all at once wasn't in my head before. "Do you know, that's well thought of, Collins!" said his lordship. "You've weathered the Cape before, by the bye?" – "A dozen times, Lord Frederick," said I; when a regularly jovial roar of laughter broke fair through the port into the cabin, from over the schooner's taffrail, as she sheered end-on to the frigate's quarter, and Lord Frederick leant forward with the glass screwed into his right eye to see along their decks, which were covered aft with an awning like the open gable of a tent at a fair. "Singular!" said he; "by the lord Harry, who or what can that be Mr Hammond has got there?" Dangling over the French schooner's taffrail were to be seen the soles of two immense boots, with calves and knees to match, and a pair of tightish striped trousers worked up more than half way, 'till you saw the tops of the stockings; just beyond the knees was the face leaning back in the shade of the awning and a straw hat together, out of which a huge green cabbage-leaf hung like a flap over one eye, while the other kept gazing in a half-closed sleepy sort of way at the sky, and the red end of a cigar winked and glowed in the midst of the puffs of smoke lower down. The first lieutenant started up shocked at the sight, the noble captain of the Hebe sat with his eyeglass fixed, between amusement and wonder; for my own part, when the voice of this same prodigy broke all of a sudden on us out of the awning, in a mixture of stuttering, hiccuping, Yankee drawling, and puffs at the cigar, 'twas all I could do to hold on, with the knowledge of where I was. "Wall now, general," said the American, as if he were talking to some one aloft or in the sky, "ye-you're qui-quite wrong – I ki-kick-calc'late I've fit a deal more be-be-battles than you have – I re-respect you, Ge-Ge-General Washington; but I ho-ho-hope you know who – hic – whom I am!" Here Mr Daniel Snout, who was in a state of beastly intoxication, swayed himself up bodily into the schooner's taffrail, and sat with his arms folded, his long legs swinging over the stern, and his head trying to keep steady, as he scowled solemnly aloft over the frigate's mizen-royal-masthead; while the third lieutenant, Mr Hammond, and the master's mate he had aboard with him, could be heard laughing at his back, as if they had gone mad – Hammond being a wild sprig of an Irishman, who would go any length for a piece of fun.
Just then the American's one eye lighted on the side of the frigate, till it settled lazily on the port of the captain's cabin: first he seemed to notice Lord Frederick Bury, and then myself, the first lieutenant having just recovered himself enough to rush toward the door to get on deck. Daniel himself surveyed me scornfully for a moment, then with a sort of doubtful frown, and a gravity that passes me to describe, unless by the look of an old cock a-drinking – evidently trying to recollect me. "Hallo, mister!" shouted he suddenly, "you haven't touched those notions of mine, I hope." With that he made a spring off where he sat, as if to come towards us – no doubt thinking of the Seringapatam, and the valuables he had left aboard, without seeing the water between; and a pretty deep dive Mr Snout would have made of it, into an ebb-tide that would have swept him under the frigate's bottom, if Mr Hammond and the midshipman hadn't both sprung forward in time to catch him by the neck of the coat. There, accordingly, was the Yankee hanging like a spread eagle over the schooner's taffrail, yelling and turning round at the same time like a fowl on a spit – the third lieutenant's and the mate's faces, two pictures of dismay, as they held on, at finding for the first time where the schooner had shied them round to, with their two pairs of eyes fair in front of the captain's eyeglass, – while Mr Hall was singing out like thunder from the deck above us, "The schooner ahoy – d'ye see where you've got to, sir; haul ahead on that cable, d'ye hear, you lubbers, and keep clear of the ship!"
"Mr Collins," said his lordship quietly to me, as soon as he could keep his countenance, and looking the sterner for the trouble he was put to in doing it, "you will get your things and go aboard the schooner directly – take her in charge, sir, and send Mr Hammond back here." – "Very well, my lord," said I, waiting in the doorway for something more, which, from something in Lord Frederick's look, I had reason to expect, knowing it of old. "I can only spare you a dozen of the men she has," added he; "but if you choose you can send ashore at once to pick up a few makeshifts, or anything you find!" – "Ay, ay, my lord," said I; "the best hand for that would be Mr Snelling, if I may take him, Lord Frederick?" "Oh, certainly," was the answer; "and harkye, Collins, you had better shift your berth a few cable-lengths farther off, or more, if you please." – "One thing, my lord," said I, stooping down to see through the port, "I don't much like the heavy ground-swell that begins to meet the ebb, Lord Frederick; and I fancy it won't be long ere Table Mountain spread its supper-cloth – in which case I'd consider it necessary to slip cable and run out at once, though I mightn't get in again so easily. Am I to find the frigate here again, Lord Frederick?" – "Deuce take it, man – no!" said his lordship. He turned his back to hide the evident twinkle of his eye. "Should we part company, of course you make for the Bay of Bengal! You can't be sure of the Hebe, short of the Sandheads – and if not there, then opposite Fort William, at Calcutta." – "Very good, my lord," said I, and had made my bow to go on deck, when Lord Frederick called me back. "By the bye," said he hastily, "about that Indiaman of yours, Collins – she is here, no doubt?" "No, Lord Frederick," answered I, "I believe she sailed a week ago." "Dear me, the deuce!" exclaimed he, "why I meant to have sent to-morrow to have your friend Westwood arrested and brought aboard!" I started at this, on which his lordship explained that if Westwood got to Bombay, whither the Seringapatam was bound, the authorities there would have news of the thing by this time, and could send him overland at once to England, which would be far worse for him than being carried to Calcutta, where his uncle the Councillor's interest might do something for him. "The best thing you can do, Collins," added Lord Frederick, "if you are obliged to run out to sea, is to look after that Indiaman! With such a neat thing of a sea-boat under you, you might do anything you please; so cruise to windward or leeward in chase, find her out, and take out Westwood bodily – lose him afterwards in the Hoogley, if you like – carry away those old spars of hers, and send up new ones – only don't lose the schooner, I beg; so good bye to you, my dear fellow, lest we should not meet on this side the Line again!" – "Good bye, my lord!" said I cheerfully, and hurried on deck, understanding all he wanted as well as if I'd been ordered to set her jib that moment and heave up anchor. In ten minutes I was over the frigate's side, and in ten more Hammond was back in her, with the men who were to leave; while I sent my baggage below, set the hands to work shifting the schooner's berth, and by sun-down we were lying beyond hail of the ship, opposite the custom-house, and a long line of a main street in Cape Town, where we could see the people, the carriages, and the Dutch bullock-carts passing up and down; while Table Mountain hove away up off the steep Devil's Hill and the Lion's Rump, to the long level line a-top, as blue and bare as an iron monument, and throwing a shadow to the right over the peaks near at hand.
Our friend from the United States being by this time in quite an oblivious condition, the first thing I did was to have him put quietly into the boat with which Mr Snelling was to go ashore for fresh hands, and I instructed the reefer to get clear of him anyhow he liked, if it was only above tide-mark. When they were gone I walked the schooner's little quarterdeck in the dusk by myself, till the half moon rose with a ghostly copper-like glare over the hollow in the Lion's Rump, streaking across the high face of Table Mountain, and bringing out all its rifts and wrinkles again. The land-breeze began to blow steadily with a long sighing sweep from the north-east, meeting the heavy swell that set into the broad bay; and the schooner, being a light crank little craft, got rather uneasy; whereas you could see the lights of the frigate heaving and settling leisurely, less than half a mile off. I had only six or seven good hands aboard altogether at the time, which, with those the midshipman had, were barely sufficient to work her in such seas; so with all I had to do, with the difficulty of getting men in the circumstances, a long voyage before us, and things that might turn up, as I hoped, to require a touch of the regular service, why the very pleasure of having a command made me a good deal anxious. Even of that I didn't feel sure; and I kept watching Table Mountain, eager for the least bit of haze to come across the top of it, as well as sorry I had sent Snelling ashore. "I'd give a hundred pounds at this moment," thought I, "to have had Bob Jacobs here!"