, and Sam, with his
friends, went to inquire after the great cable with which they now felt
themselves to be specially connected.

"Letta," said Robin, as they went along, "you and I must part for a
time."

"Oh! must we?" asked the child, with a distressed look.

"Yes, but only for a _very_ short time, dear," returned Robin. "You
know we cannot get you a berth on board the Great Eastern. They won't
even take you as chief engineer or captain!"

"But why not as the captain's daughter--or his wife?" said Letta, who
thoroughly understood and enjoyed a joke.

"Because, Letta, you are engaged to me," replied Robin, with an offended
look.

"O, yes; I forgot that. Well?"

Well, what we have arranged is this. I have met with many kind people
here, some of whom have been greatly interested in your story, and one
of them--a very nice lady, who is going home--has offered to take you
with her, and deliver you safely to my mother in England, there to wait
till I come home and marry you.

"How nice!" exclaimed Letta; "and you'll be sure to come home soon?"

"Yes, quite sure, and very soon."

This arrangement, being deemed satisfactory, was afterwards carried into
effect, and Letta sailed a few days later in one of the regular steamers
for England _via_ the Suez Canal.

Meanwhile the Great Eastern still lay at her moorings, completing the
arrangements for her voyage.

During this period our hero lived in a whirl of excitement. It seemed
to himself as if he were the subject of an amazing but by no means
unpleasant dream, the only dark spots in which were the departure of
Letta and the depravity of John Shanks, _alias_ James Gibson, _alias_
Stumps.

"Oh! Stumps, Stumps," he soliloquised, sadly, one day while standing on
"the green" in the unromantic shade of a huge bale of cotton, "how could
you behave so after being our trusted comrade so long!"

"Never mind Stumps just now," said Sam Shipton, making his appearance at
the moment, "but come along with me at once, for we have received an
invitation, through my good and remarkable friend Frank Hedley, to the
grand entertainment to be given to-night at the palace of the chief and
Bahee Sahib of Junkhundee."

"And who may that be?" asked Robin, with an incredulous smile.

"What! know you not the great chief whose praise is in the mouths of
all--Hindu, Mohammedan, Jew, and Gentile, because he feeds and
entertains them all like a prince?"

"He is the creation of yo